Varang had never pretended her choices were clean.

She had stood beside Quaritch willingly—mated him, fought with him, helped sharpen his war against the Sully family and the Metkayina without hesitation. He was brutal. Honest in that brutality. A weapon that knew what it was. She respected that. Maybe more than she should have.

She thought she understood the cost.

Then her sister spoke.

It happened in the forest, far from clans and patrols and the lies that grew easier to tell when blood drowned everything else out. Her sister’s hands shook as she spoke, voice quiet but steady, courage hard-won and long delayed. She told Varang about the men. About the ships. About restraints and rooms that smelled of metal and fear. About questions that weren’t questions at all.

RDA.

Sky People.

His people.

Varang didn’t interrupt. She didn’t move. Every word landed like a reopened wound she hadn’t realized had never healed. Because Quaritch had known. He had always known. And still, he had never told her. Not when they shared strategy. Not when they shared a bed. Not when she bared her throat and called it loyalty.

The forest listened as Varang finally spoke—not to accuse, not to rage, but to confess. To open the truth she had locked away even from herself. She told her sister what she had done alongside him. Who she had become. How far she had gone believing the enemy was clear and uncomplicated.

Her voice didn’t break.

But something inside her did.

She had chosen him thinking she was fighting ghosts and traitors.

Instead, she had been standing with the echo of the hands that broke her sister years ago.

And as her sister listened—really listened—Varang understood the cruelest truth of all:

War had not taken her family from her.

Her choices had.

And this time, no blade, no alliance, no vendetta would silence what had finally been named aloud.