Chapter 10 · Next War

"You're not sending me back to the eastern line as bait." I said it before the door finished shutting behind me.

Levi didn't look up from the map. Pins everywhere, red for his men, black for the ones I used to call mine. "I'm not asking, Dimitri."

"Contract says I take orders. It doesn't say I take a knife in the back for your next war."

That got him to look up. Those eyes, gray and flat, the ones that used to stare at me across an iron table while I asked him questions he never answered. Now I'm the one standing on his side of the room.

"You want to talk about what the contract says?" He set down the pin between two fingers, slow, like he had all the time in the world. "Fine. It says you're mine until the debt's paid. It says if you walk, I send the report to your old command. The one with your name on it. The one that says you broke first."

"You'd burn me to keep me," I said. "That's not loyalty, that's a leash."

"It's the only leash that works on you."

I came around the table.