Anhara
The cockpit controls were different from anything I’d seen.
Vinduthi design. Sleeker than human systems. The readouts glowed in unfamiliar spectrums, and half the labels were in a language I couldn’t read.
“Primary ignition, left panel.” Kallum’s voice came from behind me. I turned. He was slumped against the cockpit doorframe, one hand pressed to his side. Blood seeped between his fingers. “Red toggle. Top row.”
I found it. Flipped it.
The ship hummed to life beneath us. A deep sound, different from the processing station. Older. More powerful.
“Navigation interface.” He pointed. His hand was shaking. “Touch the screen. Picture where you want to go.”
“I don’t know where we’re going.”
“Think of open space. Empty. Far from here.”
I pressed my palm against the screen and thought about nothing. About darkness and silence and getting away from the flames I could still see through the cockpit window.
The ship responded. The navigation display shifted, calculations scrolling faster than I could follow.
“Vertical thrust,” Kallum said. “Blue lever. Pull gently.”
I pulled.
The ship lurched upward. The window filled with smoke, then sky, then the thinning gray of atmosphere. The farm shrank beneath us. The fires became orange dots, then a single smear of color, then nothing.
We were leaving.
I was leaving.
Everything I’d built was burning below me, and I was flying away in a ship with a dying man and a wounded pig and the last piece of a puzzle I didn’t understand.
“Hyperspace coordinates locked.” Kallum’s voice was getting weaker. “The ship knows what to do. When we clear the gravity well, it will jump automatically.”
“Jump where?”
“To the Penumbra. My team is there. We have a med bay.”
I turned to face him.
He was gray. Grayer than before. His sigils looked wrong, flat against his skin instead of catching the light. His eyes were still open, still tracking me, but the focus was fading.
“Kallum.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re dying.”
“I’m not dying.” He slid down the doorframe. Slowly. Like he was trying to control it. “I’m conserving energy.”
I was out of the pilot seat before he finished sliding. I caught him before he hit the deck. His weight was heavy in my arms, heavier than it should have been, and when I lowered him to the floor his head lolled against my shoulder.
“Hey.” I tapped his face. “Stay with me. You don’t get to die. You promised.”
“I said I’d stay vertical.”
“You’re horizontal.”
“Technicality.” His mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “The ship. You need to monitor the ship.”
“The ship can monitor itself. You said so.” I pulled his jacket open. The shirt beneath was soaked. Red and spreading. “Where’s the medical kit?”
“Cargo bay. Cabinet by the door. Blue case.”
I didn’t want to leave him. Didn’t want to let go of his hand, which had found mine somehow, his fingers cold against my palm.
But he was bleeding. And I was the only one who could stop it.
“Don’t move,” I told him.
“Wasn’t planning to.”
I ran.
The medical kit was where he’d said it would be. Blue case, Vinduthi symbols on the lid. I grabbed it and checked on Turnip on my way back.
The boar was still on the cart, strapped down with the ties I’d found. His breathing was shallow but steady. His eyes tracked me when I passed. Still alive. Still fighting.
“Hold on,” I told him. “I’ll come back for you.”
The ship shuddered. A deep vibration that ran through the deck plates and up into my bones. The stars outside the cargo bay window stretched and blurred.
Hyperspace. We’d made the jump.
We were running.
Kallum was still conscious when I got back. Barely. His eyes found mine when I dropped beside him, and something in his face eased.
“You came back.”
“I said I would.”
“People say things.”
I opened the case. Medical supplies I half-recognized. Bandages. Antiseptic. Suture tools that looked too delicate for my hands.
I pulled his shirt up. Worse than the reopened stitches. Not just the reopened stitches from before. Something new. Something deep. The blade from one of the men he’d killed, maybe. The edges were ragged and the blood welled up fresh every time I wiped it away.
“This is bad,” I said.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We were busy.”
I wanted to yell at him. Wanted to shake him and demand to know why he’d fought through a burning orchard when he was bleeding out inside. Why he’d protected me when he should have been protecting himself.
But I knew the answer. I’d known it since he’d cupped my face in his bloody hands and told me I had him.
Stupid, stubborn ghost.
“Bandages,” he said. His voice was a whisper now. “Pack the wound. Pressure. My body will do the rest.”
“Your body is half-empty of blood.”
“Vinduthi heal.” His mouth twitched. “Just... slower when there’s less to work with.”
I worked. My hands knew what to do even when my mind was screaming. Pack the wound. Apply pressure. Wrap the bandages tight enough to hold but not tight enough to cut circulation.
Torek had taught me this. Years ago. Before I thought I’d ever need it.
“You’re good at this,” Kallum said.
“I’ve had practice.”
“On what?”
“Turnip. When he was young. He got into everything. Cuts, scrapes, one time he fell in the irrigation ditch and nearly drowned.” I secured the last bandage. “I learned to fix things because there was nobody else to do it.”
His hand found my wrist. His grip was weak, but it was there.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You’re still bleeding.”
“Less than before.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring.”
His mouth twitched again. That almost-smile I was learning to recognize. “You sound like me.”
“God forbid.”
He laughed, even though it made him wince. His fingers tightened on my wrist.
“Stay,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I mean it. Stay close.”
I shifted. Sat against the bulkhead beside him. Let him rest his head against my shoulder. His blood soaked into my shirt, warm and spreading, but I didn’t move.
Outside the cockpit window, hyperspace swirled in colors I’d never seen. Blue and violet and something darker. The stars were gone. The moon was gone. Everything I’d known was gone.
But Kallum was warm against my side. And Turnip was breathing in the cargo bay. And somewhere in Kallum’s jacket, pressed against his wounded ribs, the case held everything Torek had died to protect.
I wasn’t alone.
He faded in and out.
His body was doing what he’d promised. I could see it in the way the bleeding slowed, the way his breathing steadied. Vinduthi healing. But he was still too pale. Still too cold. Slower than it should have been.
“Tell me something,” I said.
His eyes flickered open. “What?”
“Anything. Tell me about your team. The people we’re going to meet.”
He gathered himself. Summoning the energy to speak.
“Rylos,” he said finally. “He’s our leader. Violet sigils. Cold until you know him. Fair.”
“Is he the one we talked to? When you called for extraction?”
“Yes. He’ll have questions. Answer them honestly. He respects that.”
“Who else?”
“Talon. He’s... the heart of it, in some ways. Has a mate named Tamsin. Human. Navigator. Brilliant.” His breathing stuttered. Steadied. “She’s quiet. You’ll like her.”
“Will she like me?”
“She’ll respect you. Same thing with Bronwen.”
“Keep going.”
“Zarek. Big. Dangerous. His mate is Bronwen.” Kallum’s mouth curved. “She’s... a lot. Cheerful about violence. You’ll either love her or be terrified of her.”
“Can I be both?”
“Most people are.” His eyes drifted. Came back. “Varrick handles tech. Sabine is his. Then Brevan. The talker. Carys. She has a cat. Cybernetic. It hates everyone.”
“A cat.”
“Flinx. Don’t try to pet it.”
I filed that away. A team. A family he’d built over years. People who would be waiting when we arrived.
“They’ll accept you,” Kallum said. Like he’d heard the question I hadn’t asked. “You’re Torek’s student. That means something.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then they’ll accept you because you’re mine.” His hand found mine again. “They understand that.”
His eyes closed. His hand went slack in mine.
“Kallum?”
Breathing. Slow, but steady. He’d slipped under again.
I sat with him in the blue-violet light of hyperspace and held his hand and tried not to count his breaths.
He said something. Low, broken. I leaned closer.
“...could let go.”
“What?”
His eyes moved behind closed lids. Dreaming, or somewhere between dreaming and consciousness. “Easy. Just let go. Stop holding on.”
My grip tightened on his hand. “Don’t you dare.”
“Not going to.” His voice was barely a whisper. His fingers curled around mine, weak but deliberate. “Choosing this. Choosing to come back.”
“To the mission?”
“To you.” He forced his eyes open until they found me and held on, red and fever-glazed, like I was the only thing keeping the room from spinning. “A life of disappearing. Could do it one more time. Just... fade out. I know how.”
“Kallum.”
“But I don’t want to.” His thumb moved against my palm. One slow stroke. “First time I haven’t wanted to. So I’m staying.”
His eyes closed again. His breathing evened out. But his hand held mine, and his grip didn’t loosen.
I sat there in the dark and the hum of the engines and realized he hadn’t said I love you. He’d said something harder. He’d said I’m choosing this.
Not swept up. Not overwhelmed. A decision made while dying, by a man who’d spent his whole life deciding to vanish, who was now deciding not to.
When he told me he loved me later, I’d already know it was true. Because I’d heard him choose it first.
I woke to alarms.
The ship was shaking. The hyperspace swirl outside the window was gone, replaced by normal stars and something else. A ship. Enormous, dark-hulled, hanging in the void like a predator at rest. Bigger than anything I’d seen that wasn’t a station.
The Penumbra.
Kallum was still beside me. Still breathing. But his eyes were closed and he wasn’t responding when I shook his shoulder.
“Kallum. Wake up. We’re here.”
Nothing.
The comm crackled. A voice, deep and sharp.
“Unidentified vessel, you are on intercept course with a private ship. State your authorization.”
I stared at the console. Didn’t know which button to press. Didn’t know what to say.
“Kallum. I need you to wake up.” I shook him harder. “I don’t know how to dock this thing. I don’t know the authorization codes. Please.”
His eyes flickered open. Unfocused. Lost. Panic swelled through me, my breaths tight in my chest.
“I don’t know my ship’s designation or a code or anything. Please! Hurry! I’m here with Kallum. He’s hurt.”
A pause. Then the voice came back, different now. Less official. More urgent.
“Understood. We’ll bring you in.”
A hanger door flashed open and Kallum’s ship slid inside like a knife into a sheath. Atmosphere readings came back green and I pushed myself outside to the deck.
Before I could look around, a Vinduthi was there. Violet sigils dark against gray skin, eyes snapping like a commander expecting answers.
Rylos. Had to be.
“Where is he?” His voice matched the one from the comm.
“Cockpit. He’s in the cockpit.”
He was already past me. I followed. Watched him drop beside Kallum. Watched his hands move over his body, efficient and quick.
“How long has he been unconscious?”
“In and out for hours. Fully out for the last twenty minutes.”
“The wound?”
“I packed it. Kept pressure the whole flight.”
Rylos looked at me. Something flickered behind his eyes. Assessment. Respect, maybe.
“That bought him time.” He looked back at Kallum. “Get Zarek. We need to move him.”
A moment later, another Vinduthi appeared. Bigger than Rylos. Bigger than Kallum. He lifted Kallum like he weighed nothing and carried him down the ramp.
I tried to follow, but Rylos caught my arm.
“You’re Anhara.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Torek’s student.”
“Yes.”
He studied me. The same way Kallum had, that first day. Calculating threat and worth in equal measure.
“You brought him home,” he said.
“He brought me here. I just kept him from dying on the way.”
Something shifted in his face. Not warmth. Not yet. But the sharp edge softened.
“The Regalia,” he said. “Where is it?”
“His jacket. He carried it through everything. Wouldn’t let it go.”
Rylos nodded. Released my arm.
“Medical bay is two levels up. We’ll take care of him.” He glanced past me, toward the cargo bay. “What else did you bring?”
“A wounded pig. Frangian boar. His name is Turnip.”
Rylos blinked. “Turnip.”
“Torek named him.”
“Of course he did.” He turned to one of the others. “Get the boar to Bronwen. Carefully.”
The medical bay was white and humming and full of equipment I didn’t recognize.
Kallum was on a table in the center of the room. Tubes ran into his arms. Monitors displayed readings I couldn’t interpret. A human woman worked over him, her movements precise.
Tamsin. Had to be. Kallum had said she’d picked up skills.
“Will he live?”
She looked up. Dark hair. Serious eyes. Studying me the way everyone on this ship seemed to.
“There’s something in his blood,” Tamsin said, not looking up. “Regeneration suppressant. Conclave trick. Coat their blades with it.” She adjusted something on the monitor. “That’s why he’s healing so slowly. His body’s fighting the toxin and the wound at the same time.”
“Can you fix it?”
“We can filter it out. Takes time. But yes.” She glanced at me. “He’ll be unconscious for a while. Days, probably. His body needs to catch up.”
I looked at Kallum. Still and gray and hooked up to machines. But alive. Breathing. The monitors beeped steadily, marking the rhythm of his heart.
I’d kept him alive. Through hyperspace and docking and all the chaos after. I’d kept him alive, the same way he’d kept me alive through the siege.
The same way Torek had kept us both alive, even after death.
I pulled a chair beside the bed. Sat down. Took his hand.
Outside this room, the ship hummed with life I didn’t know yet. People I’d never met. A future I couldn’t imagine.
But Kallum was here. Turnip was safe. And somewhere on this ship, Torek’s legacy was finally where it belonged.
I rested my head on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes.
His hand was quiet in mine. But it was there. And that was enough.