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Her throat convulses. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“But why?” I pitch my voice to match hers, and I try to hide my amusement. “Lady Larsen, the general is not here forme.”
Her silence stretches. “No. Let’s hope that he isn’t.”
Chapter5
THE SOLDIER
Sofia
Iremember the general well, even though I doubt he knows who I am.
We only ever met once, back when I was eleven or twelve, in the first few years of my apprenticeship. He was young, around eighteen. And yet, he had already begun to rise through the military ranks.
After single-handedly preventing the desalination system in the southern wing from going into technical failure, he became an overnight hero. The promotions came so quickly, one after the other, a few were convinced that he was secretly a House’s bastard, installed by a noble parent in a position of power and prestige. But it didn’t add up. There were private squadrons for that, elite teams that were given tasks thatsoundedcourageous but rarely put House members in the line of real harm.
Gabriel Agard, as it turned out, was just the second son of another engineer, one who tragically passed a couple of years prior. And he only ever served in the engineering corps, whose members protected the stronghold from the currents and the breakdown of systems. Those soldiers were very likely to return home in several dismembered pieces—or to not return at all.
It was ten years ago, but he was already a highly ranked official. I recognized him immediately when he walked into the infirmary on his own two legs, right as a new High was beginning to rise. He carried a badly injured Alpha, one who was losing blood by the gallon and was in dire need of medical attention. We were overwhelmed and understaffed after a long string of field accidents, but the healer who was mentoring me immediately began treating the unconscious man.
Then someone with a deep voice spoke: “I have two options for you.”
I tilted my head up to look at Gabriel and found he had taken off the lower-face mask typical of ranking officers. I couldn’t turn away from his hair—a light blond, almost white, that clashed magnificently with the dark blue of his eyes. His looks were so striking, I would have called him handsome if blood hadn’t been covering half of his body.
Half and counting. The thick, viscous liquid still oozed from a gash on his biceps.
“You can patch me up now,” he said curtly, “or you can mop the floor later. Your choice.”
I flushed. “I’m not… I’m only in training, sir.”
He shrugged, which couldn’t be good for his wound. “I’m not.”
“What…what do you mean?”
“I’m not training to fix bodies. The opposite, actually. Which means that I don’t have the faintest clue where to start. No matter what, you’ll do a better job than me.”
“But I?—”
“Miss.” He bent forward, eyes leveling with mine. “I don’t give a fuck. I have hours and hours of work ahead of me. As long as I’m not bleeding, it’ll be fine.”
Before I could protest any more, he sat on the chair closest to me. I got to work, terrified to make a mistake. Gabriel didn’t smile, nor did he pay much attention to me; he activated a holo and studied the map that emerged, something that looked like the outside of the stronghold during a Low. I could tell that the cut had been made by an animal, probably by a tooth or a claw, and it was far too deep and irregular to repair with collagen. Manual stitches were necessary, which I’d practiced only a couple of times before.
Unsurprising that I accidentally jabbed the inside of his wound. “I’m so sorry,” I gasped.
“Don’t care,” he muttered distractedly.
“If it hurts, I can?—”
“You could stab your needle into my flesh with all your might, and it would not hurt a tenth as much as the walrus.” As statements went, it wasn’t very reassuring. Still, I told myself to take a deep breath, calmed down, and resumed the process.
“Were you on the outside?” I asked, mostly to get my mind off how badly I could mess up.
“Obviously,” he said.
“Did you see the kelp forest?”
His eyebrow, light as his hair, rose. “It’s impossible to miss.”
