The pine forest surrendered to the true altitude of the pass, where the trees grew sparse, twisted, and choked with black frost. The wind here was a physical wall, howling out of the gorge with a savage, biting fury that threatened to rip the heavy fur cloak from Corin’s shoulders.
Georgia led the way, her iron-clad boots crunching heavily into the freezing mud. Inside the suit, her muscles were screaming. The dead weight of the unpowered armor was a brutal anchor, bruising her collarbone and rawing the skin of her hips with every step. But she couldn't show a hint of weakness.
Behind her, Corin stumbled, his knees buckling as his boots slid on a patch of slick black ice. He fell hard, the loose hemp ropes around his wrists snapping taut as he went down in the frozen slush.
"Get up," Georgia barked, her voice flat, cold, and mechanical through the silver visor.
"I... my hands, Georgia," Corin whispered, his voice cracking from the freezing mist. "I can't feel my fingers. I need a second."
"There are no seconds," she said, giving the rope a sharp, uncompromising tug that dragged him forward.
Before Corin could pull himself up, a high-pitched, metallic hum cut through the howling wind. It was a rhythmic, rising whine—the sound of a small, high-frequency engine.
"Down," Georgia commanded, shoving Corin into a shallow ditch of frozen bracken at the side of the trail. She threw herself down beside him, her heavy armor landing with a dull, muffled thud in the mud.
High above the trail, hovering just beneath the low-hanging gray clouds, a metallic eye drifted through the mist. It was a Coalition scouting drone—a brass-and-iron sphere with three spinning, razor-sharp stabilizing blades and a single, glowing golden lens that swept the terrain below in a wide, clinical cone of light.
The gold searchlight flickered across the path, illuminating the wet mud and the dark pine needles mere inches from where they lay.
Corin held his breath, his face pressed into the freezing slush. Beside him, Georgia lay completely motionless, her white-and-gold armor blending into the patches of dirty snow. Through the narrow slits of her visor, she watched the drone’s golden lens rotate, its internal gears clicking as it analyzed the trail for heat signatures.
If the drone detected the dead biometrics of her armor, or the abnormal heat signature of an unregistered civilian, it would instantly sound the camp-wide alarm.
Georgia slowly slid her hand down to her hip. Her fingers closed around the cold hilt of the hunting knife. If the drone drifted any closer, she would have to leap and disable its central lens before it could transmit their coordinates.
For three agonizing heartbeats, the drone hovered directly above them, its blades kicking up a fine spray of icy mist. Then, with a low, descending whistle, the machine tilted on its axis and drifted away, its gold light fading into the thick fog of the gorge.
Georgia stood up, her armor groaning as she forced the stiff joints to move. She grabbed Corin by the collar of his cloak, hauling him to his feet.
"We are too close to the perimeter," Georgia murmured, her metallic voice dropping to a low, intense whisper inside the helmet. "They have eyes in the air and scouts on the ridges. From this point on, you are not my companion. You are a captured insurgent."
Corin wiped the mud from his face, his eyes wide and dark with a mixture of fear and exhaustion. "And what if they try to test you, Georgia? What if they tell you to break my hand to prove who you are?"
Georgia looked down at him through the cold, weeping tears of her silver mask. The reflection of the distant gold fires of the vanguard camp began to flicker against the polished metal.
"Then I will break it," she said, her voice entirely flat, devoid of hesitation. "And you will scream. Because a broken hand is better than a broken neck on a scaffold."
Corin stared at her, searching for some sign of the gentle, singing princess he had met in the glass gardens of the Eastern Court. But there was nothing left of her—only the cold, iron-willed survivor who was prepared to burn everything to stay alive.
"Understood," Corin whispered, his jaw tightening.
Georgia turned back toward the trail, her hand tightening around the hemp rope. With a hard, authoritative jerk, she pulled him forward, guiding him down the final rocky descent toward the glaring, clinical gold lights of the Vanguard's gate.