Chapter 1
RYNETH
Ryneth Kyron kept his hands tight in his pockets so no one would see the static jumping between his fingers.
Düren’s main off-world dock was never quiet. Engines whined. Voices overlapped. Somewhere in the bay, a cargo crate hit metal, making the structure vibrate with every impact. Even inside the dock hall, the air stung his throat.
Or maybe it was just his gut tightening, the way it always did when he ignored better judgment.
It was money that had brought him here. Always money.
Money bought breathing room. Without it, nothing opened. And this was the option that paid best.
Ryneth shifted forward with the line, work bag at his feet, thin paper ticket clenched in his hand, eyes moving over the bay while he waited. They looked to be from all over the Velaryn Reach, five planets tied together whether they liked it or not.
The canvas of his coat pulled tight across his shoulders, patched where the seams had given out in the wind.
Shivering, he turned over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the Ward, the tall concrete wall topped with wire that hemmed in the housing behind it.
He’d protected it many times from the ones who didn’t leave footprints. The ones people swore came without sound and took whoever they wanted from behind the Ward.
No one ever saw their faces.
Only the empty beds after.
Ryneth dragged his gaze back forward with another shudder. He would’ve given the coat to Tavi as some pathetic reminder that he’d still protect him even from far away, but the damn thing was too worn to last another few months here.
Düren didn’t do warm. Not in its weather, not in the way it kept people alive.
They said Helion did.
They said Helion was a planet made of glass and green. That it was safe. That people there had more than enough. Most workers never saw the white inner districts anyway, only the transfer rings and outer sectors where Helion kept the people who served it.
Safe—if you were part of them.
Ryneth wondered if those rumors were true. What safety really looked like. What it meant to be part of them.
Would they see what he was the second they looked at him? Just another man desperate enough to take any job that kept his family fed.
“Next.”
The line shuffled forward. Ryneth moved with it, eyes down, paper ticket clenched in his hand.
He thought of the apartment he’d left behind that morning.
The cracked window. The thin mattress on the floor he shared with two younger boys.
The door that didn’t close unless you lifted it first. They’d wedged cloth into the frame to keep the wind from whistling through at night.
Ryneth sighed. He should have fixed that damn door before leaving.
Tavi had been curled against his side, still asleep, thumb tucked into his mouth like he was five again instead of twelve. Ryneth had eased his arm out from under the boy’s head, slow enough not to wake him.
In the kitchen, Mara had been sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a mug that held more steam than tea.
She always poured the water twice so the steam would last longer. She never drank until the boys had taken theirs.
This morning she had. Which meant she was worried.
Ryneth didn’t want her to worry.
“You don’t have to go to Helion,” she’d murmured without looking at him. “You could take the Kassa run. They’re hiring too. It’s closer.”
“I know.”
She’d given him that small, tired smile. “Can’t convince you. I never could.”
That was true.
But there was something else, something he didn’t dare tell her. Something that didn’t feel quite right.
Every time he’d tried to look at Kassa, things had gone wrong. Either the listing vanished, or the recruiter never showed. And Helion had kept sliding back onto the screen. Listings he hadn’t opened. Contracts he didn’t remember saving.
And that gold-and-white offer had always been waiting.
“Helion pays better.” He’d shrugged. “I’ll send it back. Get Tavi the treatment he deserves.”
Mara’s exhale had sounded like resignation, and it made him want to come back with enough coin to make her proud.
She’d pressed a thin credit chip into his palm.
“Just in case.” Her fingers had lingered for a second, and instead of letting go, he’d closed his hand around the chip and her hand with it, holding on a little longer than he should have.
It felt like goodbye, even if neither of them said it.
“If something feels wrong, you get off the ship at the first safe port. There are more places than Helion.”
Mara always said that like he had choices.
Now, standing in the dock line, he could still feel the ghost of the chip pressing against his hip through the pocket of his trousers.
“Next,” the clerk snapped again.
Ryneth stepped forward and slid the ticket across the counter. He pulled one hand from his pocket and stretched it. Static prickled over his skin, eager to leap. He curled his hand to hide the faint glow.
Mara had shown him how to do that.
“Hands in your pockets,” she’d said once, wrapping his fingers closed when he was younger and the sparks had frightened him. “Hide it. People don’t like what they don’t understand.”
One wrong spark, one wrong look; that was all it ever took to make people stare, and staring never led anywhere good.
He’d always wondered how she understood when no one else seemed to.
Hell, he didn’t even understand himself. All he knew was that it was weird. He was weird. A poor foster kid with static in his veins.
She must have seen the question on his face back then, because she’d only pulled him close and said, “You’re mine. That’s all that matters.”
Good Light, he already missed her.
The scanner washed his face in pale blue. For a heartbeat, the display glitched, characters smearing before snapping back into place. The clerk frowned and hit the side of the console with her palm.
NAME: RYNETH KYRON
ORIGIN: DüREN ORBITAL OUTER RING — SECTOR 7
DESTINATION: HELION CENTRAL ORBITAL — TRANSFER TO SURFACE
CLASS: THIRD
PURPOSE: LABOR CONTRACT — HELION OUTER DISTRICTS
“Multi-slate,” she said, finally looking up. Her eyes were bored, but her tone carried the weariness of someone who’d had their time wasted too often. “You actually paid for this trip, or did you copy someone else’s file?”
He lifted his wrist without answering.
She scoffed and checked the stamps and codes, fingers moving fast. The screen chimed.
That was it. There was no way back now.
“All right,” she muttered. “Gate four. Move.”
He picked up his bag and followed the queue into the boarding tunnel. The static under his skin rose as if it could sense the engines. He pressed his tongue hard to the roof of his mouth until the buzzing behind his teeth dulled.
The tunnel narrowed into reinforced glass and metal. Flickering holos lined one wall, looping the same Helion feed he’d seen in recruiters’ offices: glass towers, terraced parks, white stone streets washed in soft rain.
HELION WELCOMES ITS WORKERS. SERVICE IS SECURITY.
“Only if you make it to the nice districts,” someone muttered.
Ryneth barely listened, too busy trying to get himself under control.
He was spiraling, and that would trigger whatever sparked under his skin. This static might have been the closest thing he had to a friend, but it had never brought him anything but trouble.
One year, he told himself. Enough to send back to Mara. Enough to get Tavi the care he needs. Maybe enough to leave Düren for good.
The shuttle interior was already cramped, seats packed tight in narrow rows. A faint vibration ran through the floor where the dock clamps held them in place. Ryneth found an empty seat by the window and dropped into it. The plastic felt cold under his palms.
Across the aisle, a girl watched him openly. She looked about his age, maybe a little younger, with a braid falling over one shoulder and a jacket equally too thin for Düren’s cold seasons.
She kept glancing away and then back, her eyes catching on his hair, pale gold even under the harsh strip lights, grown a little too long around his ears, and then on his face.
Düren’s inhabitants didn’t have blond hair. Except for him, apparently, which was why people always looked. Pretty meant watched. And watched meant questions.
Questions meant trouble.
It made him feel exposed while he tried to stay in the shadows. He’d even used some cheap sector dye that stunk like hell and burned out in a week, the color bleeding away as if it refused to stick.
People assumed he was lying about where he came from after that.
Because no one born behind the Ward looked like him.
He’d stopped trying after that. He’d stopped thinking about how his hands still looked wrong for the kind of work he did, fine-boned, callused only where they had to be. His eyes, almost colorless gray with a pale ring around the iris, always drew comments.
“First time off-world?” the girl asked.
Here we go. Ryneth groaned inwardly. He nodded and stared outside, hoping she would take the hint.
He caught her smile in the dirty window, followed a second later by a little wave through the reflection.
“I’m Lysa.”
With a sigh, Ryneth looked back and shook her hand.
“I’m going to work at a food distributor,” she continued. “My cousin says Helion streets are so clean they look polished. He says there are trees everywhere. That people go outside just to walk.”
The boy beside her rolled his eyes. “Her cousin also says the Imperials can have you disappear for looking at them wrong. So don’t get too excited about those clean streets.”
Lysa gave a small, uneasy laugh. “They don’t do that. Not really.”
“Your uncle is a wise man.” A middle-aged man with crooked teeth grinned at them over his shoulder. “Smart enough to stay off this route.”
“What do you mean?” Lysa asked.
The boy shrugged. “He means jobs that pay this well usually come with something ugly attached.”
“Go on,” Lysa prompted. “We’re about to leave, so it’s not like we can get out of this place anyway.”