Chapter 13 · A Dead Man's Message

The key's digging into my palm before I even realize I'm squeezing it.

Mira's still talking. Something about rally points and extraction windows. I'm not listening. The metal's cold and sharp, edges biting through the dirt and blood already caked on my hands. I dragged this thing out of that cell while the prisoner—the fake, the gods-damned decoy—was still coughing up his confession.

He pressed it into my hand right before the scouts hauled him off. Didn't say a word. Just locked eyes with me and folded my fingers over it.

Now I know why.

"Sienna." Mira snaps her fingers in front of my face. "You hearing me?"

I blink. We're still in the trees, half a mile out from the compound. The scouts form a loose perimeter, eyes on the dark. Damon's people will be combing these woods by dawn. Maybe sooner.

"Yeah." My voice comes out flat. "I'm hearing you."

"Then what did I just say?"

I don't answer. I open my hand instead.

The key sits there, small and tarnished. Iron, maybe. Old iron. The kind that doesn't rust so much as it corrodes, slow and ugly.