Mcmolly

A Song of Ice & Fire: After the Spring

Lira Dayne

LIRA DAYNE

_{[ ⚔ ]House}

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House Dayne

_{[ ⚔ ]Birthdate}

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191 AC (20 years of age)

_{[ ⚔ ]Reputation}

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As the third of four children to Lord Gerrod Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, Lira’s greatest achievement for much of her life was simply being his daughter. Most believed she would go the way of her older sister Polleni, a courtly girl drawing in suitors from all manner of Dornish and Westerosi houses. It wasn’t until she returned from warding in Salt Shore with her brothers Uther and Micah that she began to distinguish herself.

By her sixteenth year, Lira was courted exactly three times, one of which had fallen through because the little lord had insulted her father at supper, and another had been using her as a means to flirt with her sister. The third, a proposal from House Dalt, had ended so disastrously that she didn’t receive another until her twentieth year, and by then it had become clear that she meant to follow her brothers’ path.

Their intentions were clear: prove themselves fit to succeed their father as Sword of the Morning. The three have gone their separate ways, in search of their own glories, and with Gerrod’s blessing and reputation behind them, they have found no shortage of people willing to accept their aid.

_{[ ⚔ ]Appearance}

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Lira is a tall woman who is most often found at least lightly armored, and with a sword either on her person or close at hand. Having grown up in the heat of Starfall and Salt Shore, she tends towards thicker and longer clothes on her foray north, finding even the temperate climates of Westeros to be just a bit brisk.

She has a pale, stone-Dornish complexion, and black hair that falls just past her shoulders. She carries herself with a confidence that she might have had to defend far more often, were it not for the colors and crest of her house upon her cloak. There’s a coldness to her eyes that belies the warmth and sincerity in her smile and words.

_{[ ⚔ ]History}

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Growing up the third child behind an aristocratic savant, and between two boys practically born with swords in their hands, Lira was able to shirk her house responsibilities for most of her youth. When she wasn’t sat with the maesters and septas, she was free to roam Starfall at her leisure. She spent most of that time shadowing her brothers, watching as father taught them how to swing a sword with the skill and grace expected of their house. She would mirror them, which Lord Gerrod found amusing at first, but he quickly grew tired of taking wasters away from her, only to find them stashed under her bed the next day.

Her mother, Pollenda Gargalen, was salt through and through, and wished to foster what she saw in Lira as good spirits. So, when her brothers Uther and Micah went off to ward in Salt Shore, she was sent along with them.

Lira enjoyed much more freedom under the care of her grandparents at Salt Shore. While she was still subjected to lessons in history and courtship, she was also able to spend her free time training with the masters of arms, learning many of the things she had always only been able to watch her brothers learn. She came to understand why the Salt Dornish were viewed as hot-blooded and temperamental, and as a child of ten, Lira was enthralled.

She took to the sword with a fervor that she hoped would have made even her father proud, training each day in the bright hours and often still into the dark. She nurtured childish dreams of the day she would return to Starfall, to astound her lord father and stand beside her brothers as a knight of House Dayne.

At thirteen, she and her siblings returned to their home. Though Uther and Micah had warmed to her desire for knighthood, Lord Gerrod was not swayed. He found it impossible to keep her from training alongside her brothers, but her salted temper cooled over time, and he insisted she entertain the few marriage proposals she received. By sixteen, that trickle of suitors had dried up, and Gerrod dismayed. It wasn’t until a late summer morning, where he watched Lira best Uther in a spar, that she finally saw a twinkle of pride return to her father’s eye.

He didn’t attempt to stifle her further, and her comradery with her brothers eventually evolved into a shared dream to be worthy of their family’s ancestral weapon, and the title that came with it.

Though Dorne had managed to emerge from the Spring Sickness unscathed, their Westerosi neighbors had been slaughtered by it. Lira saw opportunity in the rising of a new Vulture King, whose raids upon the weakened marcher lords threatened to sunder what little peace remained between the Stormlands and Dornish. If she could slay this bandit lord, quash the raids, and help ease tensions, perhaps she stood a chance at achieving her dream.

So, setting off for King’s Landing, Lira seeks to meet with her good-uncle, Maekar Targaryen, in the hopes of securing aid to help with her crusade in the marches.

_{[ ⚔ ]Family Tree}

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-Lord Gerrod Dayne: Lira’s father, lord of Starfall, and the Sword of the Morning.

-Pollenda Gargalen: Lira’s mother, the lady of Starfall.

-Uther Dayne: Eldest son of Gerrod and Pollenda.

-Delia Dayne: Eldest daughter of Gerrod and Pollenda.

-Micah Dayne: Youngest child of Gerrod and Pollenda.

Amygdala Circuit

Besca stared up at the screen, watching as Ablaze dropped to a knee and the light dimmed in its eye. Voices picked up around her again, but this time there was no cheering, just wild confusion. She…hadn’t done it. She hadn’t killed Roaki. But it was plain as day to anyone with eyes—and anyone watching through the hundreds of eyes in the sky—that Blotklau was down for the count.

Was this…allowed? It couldn’t be. Besca had never seen anything like this. Ever. There had been survivors before, but they’d lived through fluke, not mercy. You didn’t spare people in duels, it just wasn’t the way things were done.

And yet, it was done.

Her eye wandered to another screen, the news where a handful of unfortunate reporters who hadn’t gotten clearance to cover the duel were instead covering the minor twin singularities. Duds, apparently. They’d been open all morning and nothing had come through them. She’d never seen that before, either. What was that, then? Two miracles in a single day?

She smiled.

“Darroh!” Toussaint said, storming over to her. “Darroh what the hell is going on? What is she doing? It’s not over!”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“She’s not dead!”

Besca shrugged.

“So then get back on the line with her and tell her to finish the fucking job!”

“Nah,” she said, and walked past him, turning her attention to the crew. “Oi, go get my girl out of there. She won. We’re going home.”

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The dark was cold and angry. It was thick, and tried to hold her down in the seat as if it had arms, as if the arms were hers. She could feel indignance from it, confusion, but mostly it was angry at her. How could she? How dare she? This was their purpose, this was what they had been born for.

LISTEN TO ME it raged, but beneath that it was pleading. DON’T GO

But Quinn went. She opened the cockpit’s door, and the daze from her phasing paired with how long she’d been in the pitch made the sun an angry glare for more than a few moments. Her thigh stung, but she could tell it and the little sore knicks across her body weren’t real, and with every moment the world grew clearer, the pain faded as well.

She walked out onto Ablaze’s shoulder, into a world of smoke and ash and dying ivory fires. And ichor. God, it was everywhere; splattered across her Savior’s body, pooling beneath Blotklau, and strewn all over the hills. A rank smell, metallic and…brine? Brine, and home. Paint—white paint on four walls no windows no doorknob no—

The shroud returned. It closed around her like a hug, grudging and unsatisfied, but present. It took hold of the burgeoning panic within her, as it had taken hold of her pain, and it sank. It sank deep into her mind, not to drown, but to tread water. With every moment, every breath she took, it grew more distant from her, and she more numb to it.

It would be back. We would face it together.

Staring off into the horizon, she could see little dots traversing the hills, drawing closer. They were coming to get her—to take her home.

She’d done it.

Quinnlash Loughvein had won her duel without taking a life. The drones swarmed above her, buzzing, excited. Something new had happened today, and it wasn’t clear yet, not to her, not to anyone, what that would mean.

But she’d done it.

It was actually over.

GET BACK INSIDE

So clear, it was almost like she was still connected. The words came to her with dreadfully familiar urgency, only last time, they’d said something else.

They’d told her to RUN

GET BACK INSIDE

QUINN GET BACK INSIDE. RECONNECT.

“—Quinn get back in! Get back in now!”

Besca’s voice was frightful, panicked. But what? What was it? Blotklau remained still behind her, and there was nothing else but the drones and the approaching convoy.

Except…except she couldn’t see the convoy anymore. She hadn’t lost it, she knew where it was coming from, but at the same time it was just…gone. No, not gone, hidden. There, some ways ahead of her, between her and them, the air was strange. Strange, and shimmering, almost mirrorlike. It flexed and undulated with liquid motions, but with every moment that passed she saw her own Savior’s reflection there, hovering in thin air as the edges around it grew more and more real.

THEY’RE COMING. GET. BACK. INSIDE.

Ablaze’s reflection changed. Its shape was different, its posture, and its eyes…red. Awake. The realization struck her then, on one side of the moment, that it wasn’t her reflection at all.

But it was familiar. So terribly familiar.

And on the other side of that moment, the air shattered, and a Modir came walking from the void of a singularity. It was tall, and donned from its shoulders was an iron cloak that ran down one side. In its uncovered hand it held a blade with a sharp cross guard and a fuller blazing with white light.

It was the swordsman.

Amygdala Circuit

The pavilion erupted. In sixteen years—hell, in her whole life—Besca had never heard so much noise from so few people. They cheered louder than the Helburkans’ dirge, louder, it felt, than the roar of Ablaze’s cannon. It was hard to tell how much of it was her own, but Besca was absolutely certain her throat would be raw tomorrow. In her ear, she heard Dahlia squeal and burst into sobs of joy, and god if it wasn’t the second time in too-fucking-soon that she didn’t have to fight back her own tears.

It was over. It was over, Quinn had won. She’d beaten an animal like Roaki Tormont, and in stunning time.

She’d survived.

She’d—

“Disconnect! Disconnect! Or I take the arm too!”

She hadn’t—

“Quinn!” Besca shouted. She hadn’t noticed how the people around her had fallen almost instantly silent as they all saw what was happening. Saw that it wasn’t over. “Quinn you have to—that’s not how it works. You have to…”

“KILL.” This was not a word between breathes, a ripple at the bottom of her mind. This was a voice in Quinn’s ears, as real as the screams it overshadowed. “KILL HER. YOU WON. KILL HER.”

Beneath her, Blotklau thrashed and low, warbling groans dribbled from its mouth. Roaki’s screams wavered between pure, hellborne rage and broken, agonized sobbing. The hand of her ruined arm clutched impotently at the earth, unable to do anything more than drag ditches into dirt and stone. She arched against the foot on her back, trying to turn herself over, but Quinn had her pinned at the elbow by her cannon. White hot fire and burning exhaust seared the flesh where it touched, digging deep, closer and closer to bone each moment.

“I—I’ll…” neural static fuzzed Roaki’s words, but they were choked nearly beyond intelligibility anyway. “No! N-no! Wuh…ghah…won’t…not…”

The harder Quinn pushed, the harder Blotklau pushed back. The popping, the sizzling of ichor, hollow snapping of great bones and the tearing of colossal tendons. Roaki’s enraged pain took on a panicked edge as the inevitable grew closer, and faster than even Quinn could realize.

“I’ll…kill…you!”

A final shriek overtook the awful sound of Roaki’s arm ripping apart at the elbow, raw, furious, as Blotklau torqued around, propped up on the shattered bones of her other arm, and lunged at Ablaze’s face, razor maw gaping and ready to clamp shut on her neck. But even with the element of surprise it wasn’t enough. She barely made it as high as her chest, snapping uselessly at nothing.

The air in Roaki’s lungs wore out. Blotklau shuddered, her head twitched, and then she fell back limp on to the dirt. The red lights of her eyes dimmed. Over the comms there was a soft, pitiful wail, and the sound of someone tumbling out of their chair. Then quiet.

“FINISH. IT.”

A shiver passed through Quinn’s body. Not her Savior, but hers. For the briefest of moments she was two beings, and that shroud that had wrapped her, protected her from the pain, now constricted her. It was almost like she was back in those early dreams, a passenger in her own body, only the driver couldn’t quite move it. She could feel Ablaze twitching, see herself repositioning the cannon over Blotklau’s head. She could still do it. It wouldn’t be hard, we could do it together. We can. We can kill her Quinn, it’s what she deserves. We hate her, don’t we? Helburke dog. Monster. Taker. She deserves it.

PULL. THE. TRIGGER. NOW.

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia sat in the cockpit seat, hunched over the tablet, clutching it like a life raft in a storm. When the axe dug into Ablaze’s leg, she gasped loud enough to echo in the cramped, dark chamber. She had been ready to throw the screen aside and connect, wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but something stopped her. Not something she saw, not something she heard, but rather, something she didn’t hear.

She didn’t hear Quinn scream.

She heard her gasp, or grunt, maybe. She heard something but it wasn’t the cry of agony she’d expected. And when that absence gave her pause, she saw Ablaze right herself, almost immediately.

In a daze, Dahlia watched as Quinn dipped, ducked and deflected enough of Blotklau’s assault to keep herself alive. Then, in a sweeping arc, Ablaze’s leg came up, extended straight over her head like a clock struck noon. She might have been frozen there in that moment forever.

The leg came down. Hard. The toughened shin and modium scutes slammed down onto Blotklau’s shoulder with such speed and force it sent the Savior down to a knee, and the ground beneath her caved and the air cracked. Ichor sprayed the air, sprayed Ablaze, and Blotklau’s outstretched arm went limp.

Roaki screamed raggedly in the comms. There was unabashed pain in her voice, but it was quickly and violently overtaken by fury. As Ablaze backed away, Blotklau stumbled after her, tumbling down a hill and slamming into the next one as she dragged herself up it. Her left shoulder was crushed, caved in like the ground behind her. Bones black by nature or simply drenched in ichor splintered up through the flesh, and she could hardly so much as lift her forearm.

It didn’t stop her.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” She clawed after her, hunched, her sprint fast and loping. “You think you can hurt me? No one hurts me! No one hurts me! I’ll show you—I’ll fucking show you! I’m gonna gut you like a fish! C'mere!”

Ferocious though her threats were, it took a long time for her to get her speed back, and by then Quinn had gained enough distance and momentum that, when she did catch up, did swipe at her, it was never quite close enough. Her claws skinned flesh, scraped modium, but couldn’t find purchase.

“Quinn,” Besca said, and while the worry wasn’t entirely gone, there was something equaling it now: confusion. “You have a shot. You have lots of shots, here. You gotta take one before she gets close again!”

A breath in Quinn’s chest, not from Quinn’s lungs. TAKE THE SHOT.

Roaki reached out her hand, and the axes tore into being. One she kept in her grip, the other she bit down on, held so firmly her jaw locked and her teeth cracked and shifted.

Besca’s warning was too late, she was already close again, and closer every second.

But the seconds were up.

A blackness crept in on Quinn’s vision, enshrouded her. The voice within her took a deep, bracing breath, and together they passed a dark threshold. On the tips of her ears, just soft enough to be ignored, but too loud to deny, came whispers from somewhere else. Somewhere that felt like home. Somewhere she wanted instantly and desperately, so desperately to return to, to be again, to be whole again and—

“No.”

“We are here.”

We. Are. Here.

She was here. Here, on Illun, in Casoban. Right here, in Ablaze. It was like something had anchored her by the soul, and refused to let her go, refused to let anything take her away.

Her eye burned, not with pain but with power. That red orb burst with white light, her cannon hummed and then roared with unbridled potential.

Quinnlash phased.

Amygdala Circuit

There was a tense moment in the pavilion, a sharp sound as everyone watching collectively sucked in a gasp as Quinn launched herself into the air, then a wave of almost deafening hollers when she landed again in one piece. Beneath the surface of her mind, she might even have caught the ripple of panic from the depths.

Besca was not immune, having stood up so abruptly her chair toppled behind her. She was might have nearly broken her silent pact not to curse in front of her, had she not been paying close attention.

“Quinn!”

The word hardly reached Quinn faster than the axe did. A low, horizontal whirl came to an abrupt and violent stop in Ablaze’s thigh. Not deeply, and skewed sidelong from how far it had been thrown, but to someone new to flesh wounds, judging the severity would be difficult through the explosion of pain.

“You can’t run from me!” Roaki shouted. And just as Quinn had thought, Blotklau had indeed covered the space in no time.

The deflected axe lay discarded, yet unrecalled, perhaps momentarily forgotten. The one in Ablaze’s leg, however, was left there out of malice. For pain’s sake. Blotklau came at her unarmed, but it would have been a foolish and final mistake to assume her any less dangerous.

Something boiled within Quinn, louder than that shunned command to KILL. It wrapped her like a cloak, like a barrier between her and the Savior, and in the same way she’d shoved the voice under before, now it was wrestling to rein in her pain. A layer of numbness came to her, dull, but not ineffective. IGNORE IT it demanded, agonized. FIGHT.

Claws splayed, Blotklau came at her in a flurry of slashes and spearheaded strikes. Where they landed on flesh, even grazing, they carved and sprayed ichor, and in the bottom of her mind she could feel something pulse each time.

“Let me hear it!” Roaki’s voice was ravenous. “Scream! Beg! Come on!”

Amygdala Circuit

There were few words more terrifying to hear from a pilot than: “Trust me”, but Besca didn’t object, because there also few words that could make her feel as helpless. Trust her, she thought. Well I don’t have much of a choice.

She watched as Blotklau took a few starting steps forward, only to stop as Quinn…taunted her? Besca balked, she wouldn’t have thought Quinn capable of insult. Then again, up until last week, she wouldn’t have thought her capable of swearing, either. It was a crass jab, and, frankly, about as blatant a play as she’d ever seen anyone make.

And it seemed to work like a charm.

“Oh, I get it,” Roaki growled in her head. “You think making me mad’ll get me to kill you quick?”

Blotklau hunched, her hands flew out wide and her claws tore unreal holes into the air. Swiping her arms across her chest, the axes flew into being, blades bursting to life with white fire.

“Tough fucking luck! I’m gonna pull you apart slow and careful! You’re not gonna die ‘til I say you can die!”

The girl screamed fury, but even with her voice in the comms, Blotklau’s roar was louder. The Savior broke into a mad sprint, low and nimble, closing the distance with frightening speed. With only a hill between them, she reeled back one of her axes and threw it in a whirling arc for Ablaze’s leg, poising to lash out with the other.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn was too far away to see the way her words effected Roaki, but the silence was enough. The other girl grumbled over the comms, then scoffed.

“Don’t think you’re gonna be doing much talking,” she said. The cruel grin was almost audible. “But you’ll scream plenty.”

Above them, like a hundred holes poked into the sky, there hovered a swarm of drones. Some were doubtlessly from the camps, but most had been sent by news organizations. Casobani, Helburkan, Runan, likely even Euseran. This duel had stretched on for days, three pilots dead, with one more to follow. It was impossible for Quinn to know if the people of Casoban were aware of how new she was, but it was likely, and right now they must have been wondering why their Ministers hadn’t taken Eusero’s aid. Eusero as well must have been watching with a mix of dread and, perhaps for some, a sense of schadenfreude. They should have taken the hand. Now they drown for it.

But if she thought back, thought about the Board, and the Prime Minister, and the Euseran higher-ups, Quinn would know that in the grand scheme, the only true loser was Runa. That Eusero was waiting, circling above the carrion of this field, ready to pull Casoban onto its deck, and let Runa struggle and sink until they took the hand as well.

On the smaller scale, on the one that faced her now, she and Roaki Tormont were playing a game with no winners. If she meant to change that, first, she’d have to survive it.

A beep in the comms, Besca’s voice in her ear.

“Time to roll, hun.”

Across from her, Roaki dashed for the cockpit. Quinn could hear a brief, discomforted straining in the Pilots channel, and moments later, Blotklau shuddered awake.

Amygdala Circuit

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Dahlia had not kept her promise, she had not stayed with Quinn up to the last moment. It ate at her, but only a bit—she didn’t have a choice, after all. The elevator was making its last trip up to the Aerie before the duel began, and so she broke one promise to keep another. She would wait in the hangar, and watch from the screens, and if things turned ugly she would connect.

And she would save her sister.

It was a good thing a bulk of the station’s engineers and hangar staff were at the pavilion. If there’d been actual security here, she might not have been able to make it to Dragon unquestioned. She got a few odd looks on her way up, and made a show of leaving to go to the dorms. By the time she’d circled back to the hangar, no one even noticed her.

So she sat in the open cockpit, tablet in her lap. Between the heating units in her suit and her intense focus on the screen, she hardly felt the cold. The back of her mind was field of worry, sown with the waiting seeds of guilt. If this went wrong, if she did go down there, she would be breaking the Illun Accord. In the best case she would hang. In the worst, there’d be war.

Besca had seemed renewed with confidence that Quinn could do it, that she could beat Roaki. But when Dahlia had said she was returning to the Aerie, there’d been a knowing look shared between them.

Besca knew what she meant to do, and she hadn’t stopped her.

Among those guilty buds in her brain was a sprout of regret for how harsh she’d been. How she’d doubted Besca’s dedication. She’d never apologized for that, but she would. She just hoped they wouldn’t be her last words.

On her screen, the Saviors moved. Blotklau shook to life behind Helburke’s camp, rolling her shoulders and wiping the black slaver from her mouth. She stomped out over the mountainous wall and into the dueling plains and hills.

On Runa’s side it took a bit longer. She watched Quinn ride the lift up, suit donned and looking down at the camp below. With a sudden sting, Dahlia realized she’d never asked Quinn if she was afraid of heights. She didn’t know why that thought had come to her, but it was suddenly the most important thing in the world that she didn’t know, and she had to physically stop herself from logging over to the comms channel to ask her. Now wasn’t the time, and besides, she’d just broken a promise to her. Maybe hers wasn’t the voice Quinn needed to hear right now.

Minutes later, RS4 shuddered and her posture straightened. Dahlia watched as its giant chest heaved in a deep breath, then another, and a third, and couldn’t keep herself from smiling just a bit. Sometimes it was easy to view the Saviors like…cars. Like things that she technically knew had people inside them, but it never felt that way in the moment. Now and then though, the personality bled through. It already had the eyepatch, she wondered what it might look like with a giant braid slapped to the back of its head.

Quietly, shiveringly, Dahlia giggled to herself in the dark.

Then, as Quinn began her own march out onto the field, she noticed something odd on the register. At first she thought it was a glitch, or a typo, but on a second glance she noticed it was intentional. Changed. Her name had changed.

And just like that, the giggling stopped.

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Quinn sat on her Savior’s shoulder, the sun to her side. The day was calm, and even up here the breezes were gentle and soothing.

Some distance away Blotklau stood, facing her. They’d both walked out onto the hills, far away from the camp, and as per the rules that had been explained to her more or less on her way up to the cockpit, they’d both disconnect and wait another ten or so minutes, in order to negate any phasing advantages from the travel. An odd specification to make, but then, if she thought about Dahlia’s speeds, it made a little more sense.

So there she sat, waiting to hear the green light from Besca. Across from her, if she squinted, she could see Roaki standing on Blotklau’s shoulder as well. A candleflick of white hair blowing in the wind.

Her comms squeaked to life. Was this it? Was it time? It certainly couldn’t have been ten minutes already—

“Oi, deadgirl.” Roaki’s voice was rough in her ears. If she checked, Quinn would see that she was connected to an open comms channel labeled: Pilots. Most of the time it was abandoned—what purpose was there in communicating with someone you were about to fight to the death with? Given it was her first time though, she must have been connected to it automatically.

“The fuck is Ablaze supposed to mean?”

Amygdala Circuit

She’d been right. Of course she’d been right—Quinn was a kid, and for a brief and humiliating moment Besca had forgotten that. She didn’t deserve to be here, fighting for her life against…god, another kid, who she’d been more than happy to spend all night planning the death of. If she had the time to allow herself to feel sick, she would have. But she didn’t.

Quinn cut herself off. It tore Besca’s heart to shreds to hear her apologize, to feel guilty for having a conscience. But it was worse when she asked her next questions.

...How do you live with it?

Does it ever get better?

Besca froze, and this time the pain did reach her face. It was, without a doubt, the closest Quinn had ever seen her come to tears. It was also the quickest she’d ever recovered from it. She reached across the table and took Quinn firmly by the shoulders.

She didn’t know how she lived with it. She had no idea how anyone else could.

But she did know one thing.

“No,” she said, and a hand came up to stroke her cheek. “No, honey. It doesn’t get better. It never gets easier. And it shouldn’t. If something like this has to happen, it shouldn’t be easy, and it shouldn’t feel normal. Maybe there are people out there who do like this, maybe Roaki is one of them. I…I don’t know if I believe that, but maybe she is. What I do know, is that is not you. It never will be. You would never let yourself become that. I know that no matter how much it hurts to do this, no matter how sad it makes you, it won’t make you a monster. Quinnlash, look at me. You are not a monster, and you never could be.”

Amygdala Circuit

Besca’s excitement waned when it became clear that Quinn wasn’t as thrilled by the news as she was, and before she got much of a chance to contemplate why, she was hit with a question that withered her mood instantly, and entirely.

“...Have you ever killed someone?”

How does she mean? was the first thought that came to mind, which was a guilty feeling. She ought to have wondered why, first, or considered how she must have felt to ask such a thing. Instead, Besca found herself wrestling with her conscience for a real answer. If she thought about it for a moment, put her own selfish self-pity aside, no, Quinn likely wouldn’t count Safie, and Ghaust, and Daz, and the rest of Hovvi as someone she’d killed. Nor would she likely include the pilots before her.

She carried those deaths all the same, but for this, she would carry them quietly.

Instead, she addressed it how she imagined Quinn actually intended.

“Yes.” A hard lump had formed in her throat, and swallowing it took effort that almost choked her. “Four. I’ve killed four people. Three before you were even born. One the day Westwel fell.”

Even saying it out loud felt…odd. Like she was drawing on someone else’s memories. She recalled them all through a haze, but at the same time they felt entirely, ineluctably real. Years of separation and callouses helped her to keep the pain from twisting her face, but it was still there, in her eye.

She looked at Quinn, and felt again the unbearable weight of what she was being put through. The injustice. Why else would she ask that question? Why else would anyone ask it?

“You’re afraid. You…you don’t know if you can do it, do you?”