Chapter 21
DAVEN
“Where are we going?” Ryneth asked as they stepped into the elevator, still holding Daven’s hand.
Daven was already typing on his multi-slate. He needed Kylix. Cyprian. Possibly both.
“Food.” He didn’t look up. “I need food to think.”
“To think?”
Daven hit send, then looked up with a smirk. “Is that so hard to imagine?”
“That’s not what I meant. I—” Ryneth cleared his throat, but his lips were twitching.
“Yes, you did.” Daven pushed him against the wall as the elevator descended and dragged his tongue over the mark on Ryneth’s throat. “Hmm. You taste good.”
“Stop it.” Ryneth tried to push him off, but Daven caught his wrist and pinned it above his head, claiming his mouth in a hard kiss.
Daven jerked when Ryneth’s free hand dug into his side. “You little—”
The door pinged and opened, revealing a woman with two small dogs. Her eyes widened when she saw them pressed together.
Daven pulled back with one last slow lick, then winked at the woman. “The elevator’s all yours.”
Outside, the black hover car waited. The guard straightened when he saw them stride out of the building.
“To the hospital.” Daven opened the door and shoved Ryneth inside. He grinned when Ryneth swore as he landed hard on the leather. “And stop by a diner first. I’m starving.”
“Yes, sir.”
They drove past the outer ring of glass towers, leaving behind polished walkways and curated trees as the city changed around them, steel giving way to stone, the bright green fading slowly into gray.
Ryneth leaned toward the window. “I thought it was all glass and gardens,” he muttered.
Daven glanced at him. “Who told you that?”
“Vandor.”
Daven’s head turned. “Vandor? When the fuck did you talk to him?”
Ryneth looked over, amused. “Jealous?”
“Jealous?” Daven’s jaw tightened. “No. I just want to know what he said.”
Ryneth lifted a brow. “That’s not what you sound like.”
Daven exhaled slowly through his nose. “Ryneth.”
Ryneth’s mouth twitched.
Daven looked back at the road. “Just tell me what he told you.”
“That the glass and gardens are for the people they want to impress.”
Ryneth looked back out the window. “We don’t do that on Düren.”
“That’s for sure.” The few times he’d been inside Düren’s hospital, the place had looked more functional than welcoming.
He didn’t like that Vandor had seen fit to fill Ryneth’s head with anything. He’d have to talk to Kylix about the guard. “Helion is beautiful, but not every part of it was built to impress.”
They had left Zephyr’s walls behind when the city opened up around them.
The polished towers thinned. The streets widened, rougher here, less carefully kept.
Then the graveyard came into view, stretching along the roadside behind a half-collapsed stone wall, rows of old stone markers rising at uneven angles.
“See? Not all glass and gardens.”
“Yeah. What a depressing place.” Ryneth pressed closer to the window. “Is that… do people live there? I see tents.”
Daven looked over Ryneth’s shoulder, closing the distance and sliding his palm over Ryneth’s. “Yes, they do. In fact, Mirel lived here once.”
“Mirel? Cyprian’s brother?”
“Half-brother, yes. Like you, he was raised off-world. When his foster parents found out he could create ice with the flick of his hand, they kicked him out and sent him back to Helion. He was just a child.”
“That’s awful.” Ryneth kept staring out at the gray view beyond the window. “Is that why he’s always shadowed by a guard?”
“Yeah. When Kylix found him years later, he could barely speak.” Daven’s hand tightened at Ryneth’s waist. “Now turn your head.”
On the other side of the road stood a large building with arched windows and a stone facade.
The arches rose high and severe, throwing long shadows across the entrance while iron gates framed the broad stone steps below.
Daven shivered at the sight. There were no glass towers here, no green, none of the polished shine Zephyr liked to show off.
Just stone, and the weight of memory pressing in around it.
“The Hospital of the Living Dead?” Ryneth read, frowning. “Is that where you’re taking me?”
“I am. Come, baby. Follow me.” Daven climbed out first, then reached back for Ryneth as they stepped into the cold and headed inside.
The moment they entered, everything turned white. The walls. The floors. The coats moving through the halls.
“Welcome, Imperial Daven.” A middle-aged nurse with large glasses and dark curls pulled into a ponytail greeted them at reception. “Please follow me.”
“What is this place?” Ryneth hissed as they followed the nurse down the corridor. The halls were empty. Trays of medical equipment stood pushed against the walls.
The doors stood open, revealing mostly sleeping patients.
Ryneth’s grip tightened until his knuckles went pale, and a moment later Daven felt the tension answer in his own chest, as if whatever had locked between them kept refusing to stay quiet.
White gave way to gold at the entrance to the royal wing. Two Luminary guards stood by the doors. They lowered their gaze as Daven approached, opening the doors for them.
“Daven, talk to me.” Ryneth pulled hard on his hand. “I’m not taking one step farther until you tell me why we’re here.”
Daven glanced toward the open door. “I’m taking you to my uncle’s wife.”
Ryneth frowned. “Your uncle has a wife?”
“Of course he does. She’s the royal consort, Ryneth. She—”
“Daven? Is that you?”
The door to Norma Zephyranth’s room stood open. His uncle sat beside her bed, her hand folded inside his. He looked up when he saw them at the threshold, surprise flickering across his face as his gaze moved between the two of them.
Norma lay still beneath the sheets, dark hair spread around her like a fan against the pillow, her eyes closed.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Daven said quickly. His chest tightened at the sight of his uncle’s amethyst eyes, wet with tears. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
Milanov smiled. “Family never disturbs. What is it, my boy? What’s on your mind?”
They stepped inside. Ryneth’s distress sharpened through the bond, turning bright in Daven’s chest.
Daven clenched his fists and pulled cool air toward him on instinct, letting it move over Ryneth’s skin the way he’d learned could sometimes blunt the worst of the static between them. Proximity helped. Touch helped. Sometimes his power did too. None of it was exact yet.
He still didn’t know how far the bond reached, only that once one of them tipped too hard, the other felt it.
For a moment, he only looked at Norma. At the stillness of her body. At his uncle’s hand wrapped around hers like he could keep her here by force alone.
Then he drew a breath. “Old Helion, uncle. Do you still speak it?”
Milanov’s fingers stilled around Norma’s hand. “Why are you asking?”
“Nereth solan.”
Something shifted in the room the moment the words left his mouth.
Daven felt it first, a pressure moving through the room that stole half a breath from his lungs. Ryneth went still beside him.
The curtains stirred though the windows were sealed tight, and the glass of water on the bedside table trembled hard enough to rattle against the wood.
“What did you say?” Milanov was on his feet. “Where—”
A sharp alarm cut through the room as the monitor beside the bed surged into a violent spike.
“Good Light,” Milanov breathed, already moving to her side. “Norma. My love. My heart.”
Norma’s body arched against the sheets, fingers clawing at the air while her lips moved around a sound that never came.
“What the hell is going on?”
Nurses rushed into the room, one of them stepping between the bed and the rest of them as the alarm kept shrilling through the air. “Please step back. We need space. We need to check her breathing.”
Daven caught Ryneth’s wrist before he could move closer. Something tight and electric pulled between them.
Another nurse fixed the mask over Norma’s face while a second checked the monitor, the numbers still climbing as Norma dropped hard back onto the mattress, her breaths turning fast and shallow.
Milanov looked up at Daven, his face gone tight with something close to fear. “What did you say?” he asked again.
“Nereth solan.”
Cold moved through Daven’s chest so fast it almost felt like shock. Whatever had followed Ryneth out of Düren was real. It had reached into this room, into his uncle’s wife, and for the first time since the ritual, what lived between them didn’t feel like hunger or possession. It felt like warning.
“Good Light. Norma? Love, can you hear me? Can you—”
Norma’s body jerked once more before going still beneath the sheets.
“She can’t, Imperial,” the nurse said as the lines on the screen began to smooth. “I’m sorry. She needs to rest now.”
“How do you know that? Perhaps she can. Perhaps…” Milanov straightened, then turned his gaze to Ryneth. “Where did you get those words?”
“Do you know them?”
Milanov nodded slowly. “She used to say it all the time. It was how she lived. No one stands alone. Tell me where you saw it.”
“On the chip Mara gave me when I left Düren. She told me I could use it if I needed it, but when Concordant—” He cut himself off and looked at Norma. “It didn’t work. I thought I’d lost it, but then it showed up in Daven’s penthouse.”
“Go on.”
“I took it because I thought maybe it could help Tavi somehow.” He swallowed. “Anyway, there were words engraved in the chip. When I touched it, my static broke loose. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“Then you saw it on my painting,” Daven said, remembering the way Ryneth had gone still, eyes wide with panic.
He nodded. “I did. Before it vanished.”
“Are the words still on the chip?”
Ryneth shook his head. “No. They disappeared.”
Daven dragged his attention off Ryneth and back to his uncle. “I brought him here because I remembered you once saying Aunt Norma used the phrase.”
Milanov nodded slowly, his gaze dropping back to his sleeping wife. Her body had gone slack, her breathing returned to normal.
One of the nurses cleared her throat softly, waiting until Milanov looked at her before speaking. “Imperial, we need to make the patient comfortable. If you don’t mind, we need a little space.”
Milanov took Norma’s hand again.
“Go,” he told Daven. “Let me think about this. About what this could mean.”
They closed the door behind them and walked back into the guarded hall.
Ryneth slid his hand into Daven’s larger one as they made their way down the corridor.
He’d received messages from both Kylix and Cyprian, but Daven couldn’t bring himself to care right now.
His mind was full. To see his uncle, the Imperial of Helion, this broken… it bruised his heart. To see Norma…
“So that was her,” Ryneth whispered. “The royal consort. And she’s been like that all these years?”
“She isn’t ill,” Daven said as they moved down the hall. “Her body rejected the Dariux injections they gave her. It should have killed her, or changed her, but instead…” He glanced back toward the closed door. “She stayed.”
Ryneth was quiet for a few steps, his hand still in Daven’s. “And she’s been like that all these years?”
Daven nodded. “Ever since.”
They kept walking through the white corridor, guards posted at intervals, the air too clean and too cold after what they’d just seen.
Daven glanced down at their joined hands, then back at him. “I don’t think she’s the only strange thing in this building.” His grip tightened slightly. “Look at us. Whatever happened when it locked, you’re under my skin now.”
Ryneth swallowed. “That’s not reassuring.”
Daven’s mouth curved, faint and dangerous. “That wasn’t the point.”
They stepped out of the building toward the car.
“What’s that? You’re hungry again?”
“That too. But there is this noise in my head. Do you have that too?”
Ryneth stopped and took both Daven’s hands in his. “What do you mean?”
Daven shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. It’s just loud.”
And it was.
A vibration ran through the stone beneath their feet.
Ryneth’s fingers tightened around his. “It isn’t you,” he said. “It’s coming from outside.”
They both turned.
Behind the hospital wing, beyond the rows of graves, a shuttle descended through the sky.
It came in fast and controlled, dropping behind the graveyard on a low, steady hum that didn’t sound like any Luminary craft Daven had ever heard.
What the fuck was that?
“That isn’t Luminary,” Ryneth said under his breath.
“No,” Daven said, already moving. “Sure as hell isn’t.”
The craft lowered behind the building, its black hull swallowing what little light reached the graveyard as dust lifted in a tight ring and the landing struts locked into place with a muted impact.
Daven caught Ryneth by the wrist and pulled him closer. “Stay with me.”
Ryneth stepped in without hesitation, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Something between them tightened as both of them fixed on the shuttle.
The hatch began to open.