Chapter 34
TAKHISS
The morning sun is shy behind the haze, but it spills enough gold to warm the metal of the streets.
Ella lets me go to the market with Vex strapped to my chest in a harness she helped me adapt.
The straps press into my shoulders, a familiar weight that feels like armor.
The hum of commerce pulses like a war drum around us.
When we step out the door, I tuck Vex closer. His little face peeks over the harness. He gives a soft, vibrating coo—not quite human, a rasping trill that vibrates against my sternum—and my heart stutters. I brush my fingers across his cheek to hide the sound from passersby.
“That’s mine,” I murmur, and no one else matters right then.
We tread through the crowded walkways. Stall after stall—spices, hover-parts, neon signage, fuel cells glowing faint green.
The air tastes of fried food, exhaust, and sweat.
I growl low at anyone who dares stare too long.
Vex squirms, delighting in the noise. He latches his tiny fingers onto my vest. I feel life pulsing through them.
Ahead, an officer in Coalition trim looms in the crowd: steel jaw, scars, the crimson piping of a veteran.
Our eyes meet.
He stops. He looks at me—size, posture, the way I move. He nods. A soldier greeting a soldier.
But then his gaze flicks down. To Vex.
He stares for a heartbeat too long. He looks at the boy’s eyes. The slightly too-pale skin. The way Vex’s hand grips the fabric.
The officer’s nod deepens. Not pity. Not judgment.
Recognition.
Something ancestral. Something shared.
I freeze mid-step.
He sees it.
He sees the blood. He sees the hybrid nature I’ve been trying to shield.
Ella’s voice echoes behind me: “Careful, love.” She’s following close. I turn, pressing Vex’s face into my chest to hide him, and nod stiffly toward the soldier. I push past him, heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
We buy a cold fruit drink from a street stall to blend in. Vex squirts some on my hand. The juice is sticky and cold. I let him play, but my eyes are darting, scanning, assessing every face in the crowd.
Do they all know?
The vendor nods at me respectfully. “Good father,” he says in a clipped accent.
I swallow, throat dry. “Trying to be.”
He smiles. Doesn’t pry.
But now, every glance I get in the market looks like an accusation. I see measurement. I see calculation. I walk with broad shoulders, protectiveness baked in my posture, but inside I’m spiraling.
If a random soldier can see the scales beneath the skin, a magistrate will too. We are walking through a city of glass with a stone in our hands.
Later, under a neon canopy, I try not to ask. But the fear burns: Is it too obvious?
Ella sits beside me on a crate, watching me watch the crowd. I shift, blocking the line of sight to Vex.
She meets my eyes. She sees the tension radiating off me.
“He saw,” I say, voice barely a whisper.
Ella stiffens. “Who?”
“The officer. He looked at Vex and he knew, Ella. He recognized the blood.”
She reaches for my arm, her grip tight. “Vex is covered. He’s just a baby.”
“He’s a hybrid,” I hiss, low so no one else hears. “And he’s getting bigger. We can’t hide what he is forever.”
She looks away, biting her lip. “We don’t have to hide him. We just have to protect him.”
“Protection requires walls,” I say. “We’re out in the open.”
We sit in silence as the market sings around us: clatter, chatter, sizzling grills. I trace patterns on Vex’s tiny hand. I memorize the shape. The curve of his nails, sharper than a human infant’s. The way his skin feels tougher, denser.
He is mine. Undeniably, dangerously mine.
Back at the workshop, the sun sets, casting long, bruised shadows across the floor. I put Vex down in his crib and stand there, flexing my hands. The harness has rubbed my skin raw, but I don't feel it.
Ella watches me from the doorway. “You’re spiraling.”
I turn to her. “I’m assessing threats.”
“Takhiss…”
“Autrua was right about one thing,” I say, the words tasting like bile. “Paperwork. Legitimacy. If they drag us before a Tribunal, and they see him… they will classify him as an experiment. Unless I have the power to stop them.”
Ella crosses the room and presses her hand to my chest. “We will figure it out.”
I cover her hand with mine. “I won’t let them take him. Or you.”
“I know.”
She kisses me, soft and reassuring, then heads upstairs to wash the city grit from her skin.
I don’t follow. Not tonight.
I stay in the dark of the workshop.
I move to the workbench where I stashed the datapad Autrua gave me. The Land Deed. The Citizenship Restoration. The "Claim."
I turn it on. The screen glows pale blue in the shadows, illuminating my face.
Takhiss, Son of Vorga. Landholder of the Flame Spires.
I hate her. I hate her politics and her games. But today, in the market, I felt the weight of being nothing but a suspect.
If I want to keep my son, I might have to become the Lord she wants me to be.
I trace the seal on the screen with one claw.
Structure, she had said. Governance.
I look up at the ceiling, toward the room where my family sleeps.
“I’ll build you a fortress,” I whisper to the dark. “Even if I have to build it out of lies.”