They poured back into the Gwennan all nerves and sharp elbows.
Not panic.
Not quite.
Panic was loud.
This was worse.
This was the brittle, breath-held urgency of people who had just learned the knife was already inside the room they were trying to reach.
Diana climbed in first and immediately became a battlefield.
“You. Ammunition. You. Medical supplies. You, copy every scrap of evidence twice and keep one copy off any bracer network. No open comms unless Arcade clears the channel. No Church roads. No Council gates. We use the western drainage routes if the Warrens confirm them.”
Topsy straightened so fast she nearly hit her head on the ceiling.
“Yes, scary command lady.”
Diana pointed at her.
“Explosives packed, not armed.”
Topsy’s ears dipped.
“Less fun, but probably wise.”
“Lumina,” Diana continued, “extra mana shields. Sparkshots. Anything that can wake someone or keep someone upright. And healing kit.”
Lumina nodded quickly and began shoving small shield discs into a satchel with both hands.
“Yes.”
“Plum, footage secured.”
“Already copying.”
“Again.”
Plum did not argue.
That said enough about the day.
Ray pushed herself upright from the bench.
Too fast.
The van tilted.
Not actually.
Her skull just had opinions.
Pitch’s hand appeared at her elbow.
Ray glared at it.
He withdrew it by half an inch, which was apparently the compromise.
“I can help pack,” Ray said.
Diana looked at her.
Then at the faint grey beneath Ray’s eyes.
Then at the way Ray was pretending her left pupil was not still slightly behind schedule.
“No,” Diana said.
Ray’s ears flattened.
“I did not ask permission.”
“You should have.” Diana pointed to the bench. “Sit down. Lumina will heal you and Celeste once she has the kit ready.”
Ray stared at her.
Diana stared back.
Ray sat down with the expression of someone being tragically oppressed by sensible medical advice.
“Wonderful,” she muttered. “Demoted by concussion.”
Pitch settled beside the supply crates and opened one.
“Promoted to patient, actually. Very prestigious. Comes with sitting.”
Ray ignored him on principle.
Silver stood near the rear, reading the dead air as though it had personally insulted him. His arcbracer still would not reach Umbranox.
He kept checking anyway.
Arcade was at the front with C.H.I.P., hunched over the patched receiver, tools spread around him. His hands moved fast, but his face was too pale and his eyes kept flicking toward the back bench.
Hughes noticed.
Ray noticed Hughes noticing.
That was the trouble with good soldiers. They spotted each other bleeding, even when nobody else did.
Hughes was loading cartridges into an old sidearm with mechanical care, but his gaze had gone distant. Not to the city.
Not to the fight ahead.
To Celeste’s core.
To the Bardic symbols.
To whatever ghost he had heard in C.H.I.P.’s cheerful little voice.
Ray frowned.
“You two all right?”
Arcade’s shoulders tightened.
Hughes did not answer immediately.
Then Celeste stepped into the van.
Wrapped in a blanket.
Pale.
Careful.
Trying very hard not to look like she needed help, which only made her look as if one stern breeze might file a complaint and knock her over.
She looked around at the packing, the weapons, the hard-light feed, the urgent hands.
“I can help,” she said softly.
Diana turned at once.
“Sit down.”
Celeste froze.
Diana’s voice softened immediately.
“That was not a punishment. You are injured. Lumina will heal you and Ray soon.”
“Oh.” Celeste gathered the blanket tighter around herself. “Right. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” Ray said from the bench. “Apparently sitting down is the new mission.”
Celeste gave her a small confused smile, then looked past her.
Toward Arcade.
Toward Hughes.
She took one careful step that way.
“Arcade?”
Arcade bent over the receiver as if the wires had become fascinating enough to save his life.
“Busy.”
The word came too fast.
Too sharp.
Celeste stopped.
Her ears lowered a fraction.
Then she looked to Hughes.
“Hughes, did I—”
Hughes turned toward the van door before she could finish, jaw set, eyes fixed on the trees outside.
“Need to keep watch.”
He did not sound angry.
That made it worse.
Celeste stood between them with the blanket around her shoulders and the expression of someone trying to solve a puzzle no one had admitted existed.
Ray saw it land.
The tiny hurt.
The immediate scramble behind Celeste’s eyes.
I did something wrong.
Fix it.
Be useful.
Ray’s hand tightened around the bench edge.
No.
Not that.
Not today.
“Celeste,” Ray said.
Celeste turned quickly, almost relieved to be given something direct.
“Yes?”
Ray patted the space beside her.
“Come sit before Diana starts giving us numbered instructions.”
Diana, from the supply crates, said, “Do not tempt me.”
Celeste hesitated, glancing once more toward Arcade’s turned back.
Arcade’s fingers had stopped moving.
Only for half a second.
Ray pretended not to notice.
Celeste came over and sat beside her.
Carefully.
As if she might break the bench by being too much trouble.
Ray cleared her throat.
Awkwardly.
Which was irritating, because Ray did not do awkward. Ray hit awkward with a hammer until it became a plan.
“Would you mind going on patrol with me again sometime?” she asked.
Celeste blinked.
“Really?”
The brightness in her voice came so fast it hurt.
“I mean…” She glanced instinctively toward Arcade’s back. “I’m usually with Arcade.”
Ray nodded.
“Yeah. I know.”
Arcade’s shoulders shifted.
Ray kept her eyes on Celeste.
“After our little fight, we haven’t really done it together for a while,” Ray said. “And I’d like to bury the hatchet.”
Celeste stared at her.
Then smiled.
Not big.
Not dramatic.
Just soft and relieved, like someone had opened a window in a room she had been trying not to suffocate in.
“I considered it buried ages ago.”
Ray looked at her.
Celeste twisted the edge of the blanket between her fingers.
“I just want to do my best,” she said. “And not let anyone down.”
Silver looked up.
The words caught him somewhere unguarded.
For once, he did not have a polished cruelty ready. He did not even look annoyed. He simply looked at her differently, as if something in the shape of her had shifted and he was trying to understand why it made his chest hurt.
Ray noticed.
She did not understand the whole of it.
But she noticed.
Celeste, meanwhile, seemed entirely unaware that she had just said something that had changed the air.
Ray rubbed the back of her neck.
“Well. I don’t know much about you, really. Not properly. So maybe it’ll be good for us.”
Celeste’s eyes widened.
Then she leaned forward and hugged her.
Ray went completely still.
Every muscle.
Every thought.
Even her headache seemed to pause out of professional confusion.
Celeste hugged like she meant it. No calculation. No politics. No careful noble distance. Just arms around Ray’s middle and a warm little press of gratitude.
Ray stared over her shoulder.
Pitch, from the supply crates, raised one eyebrow.
Ray gave him a look that promised violence if he commented.
He smiled faintly and went back to counting shells.
After one deeply awkward minute, Ray gently put both hands on Celeste’s shoulders and eased her back.
Not harshly.
Carefully.
She managed a smile.
A poor one, but real.
“You don’t need to hug everyone.”
Celeste’s brow furrowed.
“Topsy does it.”
Topsy, from the front, lifted a hand.
“I do.”
“I thought everyone does,” Celeste said.
Ray’s expression softened despite herself.
“Not everyone.”
“Oh.”
Celeste processed that with the grave seriousness of someone receiving field instructions.
Then asked, “Could I hug you?”
Ray hesitated.
Only a second.
“Sometimes.”
Celeste smiled again.
Small.
Pleased.
As if that had been a perfectly acceptable answer and not, to Ray’s mild horror, emotionally important.
Diana, watching from beside Crystal, exchanged a look with Ray.
There was pity in it.
Not the cruel kind.
The tired kind.
The kind adults gave each other when a child had walked through a room full of knives and only noticed people were standing strangely.
The kind that said, She doesn’t understand all of it.
The kind that answered, Then we make sure she doesn’t have to understand it alone.
Ray looked away first.
“Right,” she said, slightly hoarse. “Stay put.”
Celeste nodded and tucked herself carefully onto the bench, blanket gathered around her shoulders.
Arcade started breathing again.
Hughes shut his eyes for one brief second, then went back to checking his weapon.
No one mentioned either thing.
Lumina came over with the healing kit clutched to her chest.
“I can do Ray first,” she said.
Ray’s face tightened.
“Celeste first.”
Celeste immediately shook her head.
“No, Ray’s head is worse.”
“My head is none of your business.”
“You said we were going on patrol.”
“Future patrol. Present head.”
Lumina looked between them, then made the exhausted decision of a person far too small to be managing this many large idiots.
“I’ll do both.”
She knelt between the benches and lifted her hands.
Roselight gathered in her palms, soft and pink-gold, not as bright as Celeste’s healing, but steadier than her own breathing.
Celeste brightened a little.
“Lumina.”
Lumina glanced up.
For one second, they were not commander and healer, not relic-bearer and frightened little sister, not two people caught in the middle of a war neither of them had chosen.
They were just Celeste and Lumina.
Two girls who had survived too much and still did not know how to talk about any of it without duty getting in the way.
Celeste smiled.
“Are you okay?”
Lumina’s mouth opened.
Something honest nearly came out.
Then her hands glowed brighter and she looked back down.
“I need to concentrate.”
“Oh.” Celeste folded her hands in her lap. “Right. Sorry.”
Lumina’s face flickered.
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” Celeste said quickly. “Concentrating is important.”
Lumina nodded.
The healing light flowed first over Ray’s temples, then over Celeste’s brow and chest, gentle enough not to disturb the core beneath. The pain eased by degrees, not gone, but less sharp. Less like bells inside bone.
Celeste sat very still.
So did Lumina.
They were close enough to touch.
Close enough that either one could have said everything.
Neither did.
Duty sat between them like a third sister.
Ray watched from the corner of her eye and pretended she was not.
Lumina finished with a small, shaky breath.
“There.”
Celeste smiled again.
“Thank you.”
Lumina nodded.
“You’re welcome.”
It should have been easy.
It wasn’t.
Pitch was the last one inside.
He stood outside the Gwennan for a few extra seconds, listening to the forest, watching the gaps between trees, Lady Luck resting easy in his hand despite the tension in his shoulders.
Then he climbed in and pulled the door shut.
“Clear for now.”
“Lovely,” Silver said without looking up. “A phrase famously followed by disaster.”
The Gwennan’s engine rumbled back to life.
Arcade leaned over the receiver and tapped C.H.I.P.’s side panel.
“Relay any updates from the Council feeds. Running messages, camera changes, anything that looks like movement near the inner wards.”
C.H.I.P. brightened.
“Displaying.”
A hard-light panel unfolded above the central aisle.
Lines of text began scrolling down it in clean blue-white script.
WEST GATE: CHURCH BARRICADE HOLDING.
NORTH SERVICE ROAD: CIVILIAN EVACUATION BLOCKED.
COUNCIL OUTER WARD: STILL ACTIVE.
PALADIN UNIT MOVEMENT: THREE GROUPS SHIFTING EAST.
UNKNOWN JUNIOR AIDE ENTERED INNER SERVICE HOUSE.
Silver stepped closer.
His eyes moved rapidly over the updates.
Again.
Again.
As if reading them hard enough could reveal the exact corridor where his mother stood.
“Track every mention of Arcturus,” he said.
C.H.I.P. bobbed.
“Already prioritised. Also tracking ‘Caedrix’, ‘Umbranox’, ‘high-value Council target’, and several rude code names that may or may not refer to her.”
Silver’s mouth tightened.
“Show me.”
The panel shifted.
Pitch settled near the supplies, opening crates one by one.
“Medical kit low. Sparkshots three. Mana shields…”
Lumina held up her satchel.
“Eight.”
“Good.”
“I packed the cracked ones too.”
“Less good.”
“They might still work a little.”
Pitch considered that.
“In our current situation, ‘a little’ has been promoted.”
Topsy sat cross-legged on the floor beside Party Crasher, winding a cable around one paw.
Then she started singing.
Softly at first.
A little nonsense tune under her breath.
Something bright and ridiculous about a squirrel, a spoon, and a moon that owed her money.
Mezzo looked at her.
“Are you singing because you’re scared?”
“Yes.”
“Good song.”
“Thanks.”
Lumina began humming along after a few seconds as she packed more shield discs, voice thin but steady.
Then Plum joined in for half a line, mostly wrong.
Topsy corrected her.
Plum looked offended.
“You are seriously critiquing my fear singing?”
“It has standards.”
“Fear has standards?”
“Mine does.”
The Gwennan rolled forward through the forest.
Branches scraped along the armour.
Rain ticked against the roof.
The hard-light feed kept scrolling.
Silver read every update like a prayer he refused to call one.
Ray sat beside Celeste, close enough to steady her if she swayed, far enough not to make it a fuss.
Arcade kept his eyes on the receiver.
Hughes looked out at the trees.
Lumina sat near Celeste, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, both of them quiet in a way that did not feel peaceful.
Whatever bond had once made them easy around each other was still there.
But now duty sat between them, heavy and awkward, and neither of them knew how to move it.
And ahead of them, somewhere behind siege lines, jamming fields, collars, paladins, and whatever knife Godiad had slipped into the Council’s ribs, Umbranox was waiting.
Alive, Silver told himself.
Alive until proven otherwise.
The van drove faster.
