Page 177 of Aviatrix

A jet slides in near me. Not close enough for contact, but close enough to let me know he’s there.

“Kin?” Lark’s voice pops through the comms.

I clear my throat as I look out the cockpit window. He can’t see me, but I can see him.

“Yeah?”

“What did Ivanov say?”

“She said she’s going to get Amber out,” I say, more hopeful than I feel. “We need to help, though.”

“We’re going to be cutting it close,” he replies. “We’ve never tried flying VAL this fast before.”

“She’ll be fine,” I tell him, wondering how true that statement is. “She knows what she’s doing.”

“Do you?”

His question lands like an anvil in my chest.

The truth? I have no idea what I’m doing. No idea if this is the right call. No idea if I’m sending all of us into the fire with no way out.

But deep inside, I know we have to do everything we can.

Because I can’t be the person who stays locked away in a mountain while the world burns. I won’t be.

“We’re going to get her out, Lark,” I say.

“This is the second time she’s been in this… situation.” He exhales, long and heavy, and I know he’s thinking about the White House attack. “I’m failing her.”

“You’re not,” I tell him. “We’re defying orders to save her.”

“I chose you back at that cemetery, Kin,” he says, and I know the entire team can hear him, Eli included. “I chose to save you. I didn’t choose her. I should have chosen her.”

My heart pounds harder. “We all had to make choices, Lark. We did the best we could. None of us knew what Rourke was going to do.”

“I can’t keep choosing you, Kin,” he says, and something broken in my chest shudders.

He didn’t choose me.

Not when he was sleeping with Gina behind my back. Not when he got James killed and let it destroy whatever we had. Not in the small, everyday choices that build a life.

But he did choose me once. At that funeral. In that cemetery.

And maybe I should be grateful for that.

Instead, I want to yell at him for what he’s done, for what he hasn’t done. For choosing me only when it’s convenient to him. But mostly, I’m just tired.

“Then choose something else,” I shoot back. “We both know you’re capable of it.”

“Nova,” Eli’s cuts in, calm and direct. “Back channel. Like we used to.”

I switch to Channel Zero, the one we used back at the Academy to flirt during training runs.

“You there, Quay?”

I nod instinctively, even though he can’t see me. “Here.”

“You okay?”