Thoryn
Ilay on the cot, staring at the flickering emergency lights on the depot ceiling.
Amber. Red. Amber. The pattern repeated.
Gave me something to focus on besides the sensation of my shoulder attempting to melt off my body and the deeper, worse agony of the bond trying to complete itself while my altered biology screamed in protest.
New data points. The scientists would have loved this. New data on pain thresholds. Gold star for Dr. Solis, you sadistic bastard.
Maris sat on the opposite cot. Two meters away. Might as well have been two kilometers for how much good the distance did.
My body was fighting itself. A fresh wave of nausea rolled through my gut. Tasted copper. Again. Always copper when the pain spiked past manageable into whatever territory this was.
She was still sitting there. Still wrapped around herself. Still breathing in that pattern I recognized from years ago. Guilt breathing. Self-blame breathing. The breathing pattern of someone cataloging their failures and finding the list unacceptably long.
I’d just told her the worst parts. The experiments. The twisted bond. The fact that proximity to her caused me agony. Expected her to process that logically, accept that I was broken beyond repair, and leave. Smarter move. Cut losses. Abandon the damaged asset.
She hadn’t left.
She sat there wrapped in guilt that wasn’t hers, blaming herself for things done to me. Wrong. Completely backwards. None of this was her fault. All of it was mine for getting captured in the first place, for being weak enough that they could twist me into this.
The silence stretched. Heavy. Uncomfortable. I was terrible at this. Words were not my strength. Fighting, yes. Tactical assessment, adequate. Conversation requiring emotional intelligence and vulnerability? Absolute failure.
“You should sleep,” I managed, my voice grinding past the pain and the copper taste and the exhaustion. “Need to move in a few hours. Get the next cache.”
“Can’t sleep.” She didn’t look at me. Just stared at her own hands. “Every time I close my eyes I see the manifests. The cargo codes. All those runs.”
Right. The trafficking. She’d just learned she’d been the logistics arm of mass kidnapping. That was probably worse than dealing with my broken biology. Definitely worse.
“Not your fault,” I said. Again. Knew it wouldn’t help. She’d already rejected that logic once. But I was a simple creature. When I didn’t know what to say, I repeated the last thing that seemed true.
“So you keep saying.” Her voice was flat. Dead. “Doesn’t change reality.”
“Changes context.” I shifted slightly on the cot.
Mistake. The plasma burn sent a spike of fresh agony through my shoulder.
Breathed through it. Functional. Still functional.
“Consortium committed trafficking. Used you as transport. Without your knowledge. Without your consent. That’s not complicity. That’s being a tool.”
“A tool that facilitated mass kidnapping.”
“A hammer doesn’t choose what it builds.” Was that a good metaphor? Probably not. I was terrible at metaphors. “Or destroys. Just does what the person wielding it directs.”
She finally looked at me. Those steel-gray eyes. Sharp enough to cut. “Are you actually comparing me to a hammer?”
“Bad metaphor. Point stands.” I closed my eyes. Easier than watching her blame herself. “You didn’t know. Can’t be held responsible for information deliberately hidden from you.”
“The dead don’t care about my intentions.”
“No. They don’t.” Couldn’t argue that point. She was right. “But I’m not dead. And I care. So does the crew. So will everyone else who sees that data. You’re the key to exposing this. To making sure they can’t do it again. That matters.”
Silence. Longer this time. When I opened my eyes again, she was staring at me. Different expression. Searching. Trying to read something in my face I probably wasn’t expressing correctly.
“You always did this,” she said quietly. “Found the better angle. The mission objective. The thing that mattered beyond the guilt or fear or…” She stopped. “I forgot that about you. Forgot a lot of things.”
She’d spent years building an empire. Becoming a queen. Surviving alone.
I’d spent them in a cell. Becoming a weapon. Surviving on spite and the faint hope I’d see her again someday.
We’d both survived. Different methods. Same stubbornness.
“Tell me.” The words came out before I could stop them. Curiosity overriding tactical sense. “About the years. What you built. How you did everything.” I gestured vaguely at her. At the competent, cold operator she’d become. “Did this.”
She blinked. Surprise flickering across her features. “You want to know about my smuggling empire?”
“Want to know about you.” Clarification seemed important. “What you did. Who you became. I’ve missed so much. Want to understand.”
The surprise deepened. She wasn’t expecting curiosity. Wasn’t expecting me to care about anything beyond the mission parameters. Fair. I hadn’t exactly been chatty since walking into her cantina. Hard to be chatty when every word took effort and breathing hurt.
She unwrapped her arms from around herself. Straightened slightly. Considering.
“I started small,” she said finally. “After Kestis Minor. After I thought you were dead. After I—” Her voice caught.
She cleared her throat. Pushed through. “After. I took the first job I could find. Small cargo run, no questions asked. Used the credits to buy better equipment. Took another job. Then another. Built a reputation.”
I listened. Watched her face as she talked. She was beautiful when she worked. Always had been. That slight furrow between her brows when she concentrated. The way her hands moved, gesturing unconsciously as she described supply chains and shipping routes. The focus.
“Three years in, I took over a failing operation in the Outer Fringe. Bought it cheap, restructured the logistics, made it profitable. That became the foundation. Built out from there. Suppliers. Routes. Enforcers. Network.” She paused.
“I was good at it. Really good. Turns out grief makes you ruthless. And ruthless works in the smuggling business.”
“From grief,” she corrected. “Built it from grief and spite. Some days the spite was the only thing keeping me upright.”
Spite. My favorite survival mechanism. “Spite is underrated.”
She studied my face. Long enough that I started feeling self-conscious about the scarring, the locked scales, the general disaster of my appearance. Then she stood. Crossed the space between us. Three steps. Close enough that the bond screamed.
Pain spiked. Sharp. Immediate. My breath hitched, trapped in my chest. My scales tried to shift... then locked halfway, trapped between transformation and prison gray.
She knelt beside the cot. Eye level now. Close enough to touch if I was stupid enough to try.
“Thank you.” Her voice was quiet. Rough. “For coming back. For—” She gestured at me, at my general broken state. “For enduring this. For not staying away even though proximity hurts. I don’t—” She stopped. “I don’t know if I’ve said that yet. Thank you.”
The gratitude was uncomfortable. Didn’t deserve thanks for wanting to see her again. For choosing pain over absence. That was just logic. Selfish logic. I needed to see her alive more than I needed to be comfortable.
“You’re worth it.” Repeated what I’d said before. Still true. Would always be true. “All of it. Worth it.”
Her hand moved. Reached toward my face. Stopped halfway. Hesitated. The conflict played across her features. Want versus knowledge of consequences.
“Touching makes it worse.” Her voice was flat, a clinical observation.
“Yes.” Honesty. “Contact makes it spike.”
“Then I shouldn’t—”
“Don’t care.” The words came out fast. Too honest. Couldn’t take them back. “Do what you need. I’ll manage.”
Stupid. Tactically unsound. Offering to endure more pain just to feel her touch. The scientists would have loved this. Would have cataloged it as “bond-driven compulsive behavior.” Proof their experiments worked.
Didn’t care. Let them catalog it. I’d survived eight years of them documenting my suffering. Could survive a few more data points if it meant her hand on my face.
She completed the movement. Fingers touched my jaw. Light. Careful. Her skin was warm against my scales. The contact sent electricity through my nervous system. Good electricity for one perfect second. Then the bond pathways activated and pain crashed down like a collapsing ceiling.
The pain overloaded every nerve, wiping all thought. Copper taste flooded my mouth. My scales tried to shift, locked, tried again. Failed again. The agony was total. Overwhelming.
Forced myself still. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t let the pain show beyond the involuntary scale flickering and the tension that locked every muscle. She needed this. Needed to touch. Needed to confirm I was real and alive and here.
Could give her that much. Could endure.
Her thumb traced along my jaw. Gentle. Exploring. Breathed through it. In. Out. Controlled. Functional. Still functional.
“Your scales,” she said quietly. “They’re trying so hard. I can see it. Trying to turn that deep emerald. The color I remember.”
“Can’t.” Words ground out past clenched teeth. “Locked. Experiments. They—” Stopped. Tried again. “They burned the bonded pattern out. Left the gray. The prison color. Can’t shift properly anymore.”
“I’m sorry.” Her hand was still on my face. Still causing agony. Still worth it. “So sorry they did this to you.”
“Not your fault.”
“I know. Still sorry.”
But her hand was on my face and I’d survived worse. Could survive this.
She leaned closer. The bond screamed recognition. Screamed completion. Screamed mine and home and now.
My body responded before my brain could override the stupidity. Hand reached up, caught hers, held it against my face. Contact. More contact. Pain spiked again but the bond sang underneath it. Recognition. Connection. Finally.