Chapter 11
KRISTI
The first step through the door burns worse than I expect.
It’s like walking into a memory that forgot how to welcome me. The smells hit first—firefruit glaze, charred root broth, and the sharp whisper of fermented citrus peel. It used to feel warm, rich. Now it’s cloying, like a perfume worn by someone who doesn’t love you anymore.
I make it as far as the threshold before my feet hesitate. The place is alive—laughter spilling over warm lights, glass clinking, someone in the corner booth raising a toast in Vakutan. But none of it’s for me.
I catch sight of him. Kenron. Bent over the kitchen line, muscles taut beneath his chef’s coat, golden eyes locked on a plating board like the dish might detonate if he looks away. His mouth moves. He’s saying something to a cook beside him. Smiling, even.
But not for me.
No seat is waiting.
No glance. No nod.
No trace of the man who used to tell me I had too much steel in my spine and not enough fire in my sauce.
I slide into a booth myself—his old one. My old one. Ours, once. The cushion squeaks beneath me. The table’s been polished to a gleam, erasing the spot where my ring once scraped a line into the wood.
The server who approaches doesn’t recognize me. Or pretends not to.
I don’t blame her.
She sets a glass of water down without speaking. No special. No usual. No familiar wink.
I don’t ask for anything. I don’t think I’m hungry.
But he comes anyway.
Kenron approaches with a dish I didn’t order. His face gives nothing away.
“House special,” he says.
“That’s not what I ordered,” I manage, voice quiet.
“It’s what we’re serving.”
He walks off before I can say more.
The food is beautiful—layers of charred root and spiced meat, curls of pickled violet greens, steam rising like a sigh—but I can’t taste it. I eat out of instinct. Half the plate. Maybe less.
When I leave, I look back.
He doesn’t.
..
The next night, I bring the bottle.
It’s heavy in my hands—dark glass, silver band sealed across the top. Zerikar nectar. Kenron once told me it reminded him of home, of dusty fields and old gods, of toasts offered in silence and meaning left unsaid.
I’m trembling by the time I step inside. He’s at the counter, slicing something precise and red. He sees me. I know he does. But he doesn’t move.
I walk up to the bar, the bottle tucked against my ribs like a bribe. Or maybe a confession.
“I thought of you when I saw it,” I say, placing it gently in front of him.
He doesn’t look at it.
“You loved this one.”
He finishes his cut, wipes the blade.
“Yes.”
There’s nothing behind it. Not anger. Not warmth. Just the echo of memory stripped clean.
“I wanted to—” I stop, because apologize feels too small. Too practiced. Too easy.
“Can we talk?” I ask instead, voice low.
His eyes flick down to the bottle. “We already did.”
And then he turns back to his line, like I’m just another body he doesn’t need to feed.
I leave the bottle on the counter.
It’s still there the next night.
I don’t sit this time.
I stand by the archway between dining room and kitchen, coat still on, heart lurching in a way that reminds me of stepping onto the debate floor with the wrong speech in my hands.
Kenron is humming. That Vakutan war song again—the one he used to hum when he was too tired to talk, or too angry to yell.
I don’t wait to be noticed. I speak.
“I thought if I didn’t vote against it, no one would notice.”
His rhythm falters. A pause in the song.
Kenron doesn’t look back.
“Someone else needs the table,” he says softly.
And that’s it.
Outside, the wind bites through my coat like punishment. The chill gets into my throat and stays there.
I go home, collapse onto the floor, and cue up the Holonet. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. There we are again on screen—me in an apron, him leaning too close, the two of us laughing like the galaxy could be soft.
The comments scroll.
Power couple.
When enemies fall in love.
If this doesn't work, nothing does.
I close the terminal, wrap my arms around my knees, and sit in silence.
Because none of them know what it feels like to lose someone who looked at you like you were worth redemption.
And worse?
They don't know that you might not be.
Things don’t get any easier on the home front, either. I don’t remember saying yes to the districting measure.
Not to the meetings. Not to the dress fittings. Not to the way my name starts appearing on invitation lists alongside people I once mocked under my breath.
But Dennis is smiling more.
“Smart move, Krissy,” he says, tapping my elbow with the back of his knuckles like I’m a horse he just taught a new trick. “Knew you had the instincts. Your father would be proud.”
I flinch at that.
He doesn’t notice. Or he pretends not to. Same thing, really.
“I’ve got you sitting with Patel and Dorman tonight—big donors, old money, both looking for fresh faces with spine. Smile and sip the sparkling, and don’t let Dorman corner you about the labor tax bill. He’s got this theory about reverse corruption that’ll rot your brain.”
I’m nodding.
I’m always nodding these days.
The dress they put me in clings too tight to my ribs. The heels pinch. The gloss on my lips tastes like metal. I stare at my reflection in the silver of the elevator panel, and I don’t recognize the woman standing there.
She’s poised. Serene. Dead behind the eyes.
I leave the fundraiser early. Blame a headache. Dennis waves me off without looking up from his drink.
When I get home, I pour three fingers of brandy and pull up the zoning proposal again. The actual document, not the summary they passed around at the committee meeting. I don’t skim this time.
I read.
Every. Line.
Clause 4b: establishments utilizing dual-species sanitation systems shall be subject to quarterly compliance audits.
Clause 6a: variance requests for noise, scent, or light levels exceeding human environmental comfort thresholds shall be reviewed by the Human-First Zoning Subcommittee.
Clause 12: Any establishment failing to meet three of the five specified cultural neutrality benchmarks may be subject to revocation of permit.
Neutrality.
God.
I flip to the back, to the exemptions. There’s a short list. Diplomats, heritage museums, select vendors licensed through planetary tourism boards.
Restaurants?
Nowhere.
Kenron’s not even a blip in the footnotes.
The pen in my hand snaps in half.
Ink stains my fingers, seeps into the crease of my palm like blood.
I text Marlen, one of the aides on the urban infrastructure board.
Me: Can you pull the original sponsor draft of ZP-1397? I want to see if the exemption list was amended.
Marlen: You still on that? Thought it was a done deal.
Me: Just send it. Please.
The old draft arrives five minutes later.
It’s worse.
The restaurant was never protected.
And I put my name on it.
Not just with a vote. I co-signed the floor motion to expedite.
A smiley, efficient, helpful little nudge from the Senator’s niece.
I push away from the desk so hard my chair tips and cracks against the wall. I don’t pick it up.
Instead, I sit on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, laptop glaring beside me.
I call Kenron.
It rings. And rings.
Then his voice: “This number doesn’t take calls anymore.”
Click.
I don’t cry.
Not yet.
Instead, I go where I should’ve gone weeks ago.
To the forum.
It’s held in the lower east atrium, three levels below the main Senate deck, under the pretense of “community dialogue.” It’s always too cold. Too echoey. A place built to look accessible and sound empty.
Tonight, it’s packed.
Vakutan elders wrapped in ceremonial shawls sit beside Daltari street vendors and human-alien couples holding hands like lifelines. The air hums with tension, with grief, with restrained fury.
I stand in the back. Hood up. No name badge. No aides.
I don’t speak.
I listen.
The first speaker is a Sereen baker. “My ovens are sixty-year heirlooms. The scent threshold clause means I have to enclose them. You can’t enclose Sereen fire clay. They crack.”
Applause.
Next, a Vakutan grandmother. Her voice trembles, but she doesn’t falter. “They say our market is too noisy. Our food too strong. Our children too… strange. But when humans came to Vakutar, we fed them. We never said their faces frightened us.”
More applause.
More pain.
Every word hits like a hammer.
I see Kenron in all of them—the way his brow creased when he cooked, the pride in his ingredients, the way he made everything matter. I see the child who brought me a napkin. The way the air shimmered when the spice steam hit the fan.
And I see what I took from them.
What I signed away.
What I let happen.
Someone asks me a question. I don’t catch it. I don’t even realize they know who I am until the murmuring starts. I lower my head, mutter something about listening, and push out the side door before they can surround me.
The air outside is wet with fog.
I bend at the waist, hands on my knees, breathing like I just ran miles.
Shame tastes like bile.
At home, I try to eat. My stomach rejects it.
I try to sleep. My mind won’t shut up.
Kenron’s voice, the way it sounded the last time I saw him—flat, quiet, disappointed—plays on a loop.
"You thought silence would save us."
I can’t tell what’s worse—the silence from him now, or the silence I gave when it mattered.
Both hollow me out.
By morning, I haven’t slept. Haven’t eaten.
I brush my teeth to get rid of the taste of metal in my mouth. It doesn’t work.
My inbox is full. More invites. Praise from party members. A commendation from the governor.
I reply to none of them.
Instead, I write one message.
Just one.
Subject: Re: Districting Policy
To: Senator Dennis Montana
Uncle,
You used me.
Don’t expect me to smile about it.
-K
I don’t wait for a reply.
There’s no excuse good enough. Not for what I’ve done.