Page 31 of Accidentally Fearless

"Yes." The answer came out without thinking. The truth I'd been too scared to say to the person who needed to hear it. "I want to stay. I'm scared of how much I want to stay."

"What frightens you?"

"Everything. Giving up my whole life for something that might not work out. Being wrong. Wanting something this much and losing it. I've been playing it safe for so long that wanting something feels like standing on the edge of a cliff."

"Hmm." Zenir considered this. "When Commander Talon took this campaign, he gave up a promotion that would have advanced his career by a decade. He was offered a position at Central Command—prestigious and safe, the kind of appointment most officers spend their careers pursuing. His peers told him taking the valley campaign was a mistake. That the war was unwinnable. That he was letting grief make his decisions."

She paused.

"He took the campaign anyway. And he was right. Not because the valley is worth more than a promotion. But because he could not live with himself if he did not try." She looked at me, her expression almost gentle. "You and the commander are more alike than either of you realizes. You are both so accustomed to sacrifice that you have forgotten that wanting is allowed."

My throat closed. I pressed my face against my knees and breathed through the ache.

"He will not ask you to stay," Zenir said. "He will not pressure you. He will let you leave, and he will carry the loss the way he carries everything—silently and at great cost, without complaint. That is who he is." She put her hand on my shoulder. "The question is not whether he wants you to stay. The question is whether you will let yourself want it enough to fight for it."

"I want it."

"Then go talk to him. And this time, say what you mean."

I nodded and wiped my face. I stood up—my legs were shaky, but they held.

Before I could reach the door, the base's alarm system erupted.

Red light. Klaxons. The deep, bone-shaking pulse that meant combat alert. Zenir was on her feet instantly, her hand on her sidearm, her comm activating.

"Report," she barked.

The response came through garbled and panicked. Krenix's forces had launched a full assault. Not a scheduled engagement. Not a negotiated battle. A full, unauthorized attack on the central compound, in direct violation of the ceasefire that had been informally observed since the Grand Melee.

And the compound's defense systems were not responding.

Sabotage again. But this time, it wasn't the training equipment.

This time, Therak had given Krenix everything.

12

VREX

The alarms started when I was in the command center, where I had been staring at a tactical display without seeing it for the better part of an hour.

I had been thinking about Rory's face when she said I don't know. She hadn't sounded dismissive or cruel. She had been scared, and I had responded with formality and distance, because that was what I did when something threatened to destroy me. I built walls. She had called that behavior out within a week of knowing me, and I had done it to her anyway.

Then the alarms sounded, and every thought of Rory's face and my failings was replaced by my training.

"Report." I was at the tactical display before the second alarm pulse. The holographic map of the compound and surrounding terrain flickered to life, and what I saw stopped the air in my lungs.

Krenix's forces, not the depleted, demoralized western contingent, but a full assault force, reinforced and equipped—were advancing on the compound from three directions. The defensive perimeter should have detected them at five hundred meters. Instead, they were at two hundred and closing.

"Perimeter sensors are down," the night officer reported, hands flying across his console. "Defense grid offline. Communications are—" He paused and tried again. "Communications are compromised. I'm getting interference on all channels."

Not a malfunction. Not a failure. It was sabotage on a scale that required detailed knowledge of our systems—knowledge that only someone with senior officer clearance would possess.

Therak.

"Switch to backup communications," I ordered. "Manual defense protocols. Get every soldier armed and to the perimeter. Now."

The compound erupted into organized chaos. Soldiers poured from barracks, pulling on armor, grabbing weapons, falling into formation with the discipline that three years of training, and three weeks of Rory's tactical conditioning—had built into their bones.