Chapter 17
I hadn't slept. Sleep implied rest. Stillness.
Distance from thought. I had none of those.
Her words had threaded themselves through my mind like a slow toxin, quiet, persistent, impossible to purge.
The way she'd looked at me when she challenged me.
The way she didn't back down. The cadence of her voice when she dissected the Abyss like it was an equation that had offended her personally.
And worse—her scent.
Human, yes, but altered now by proximity to me. To us. Warm. Clean. Faintly electric, like ionized air before a storm. It clung to my memory far more intimately than her image, and my body responded to it whether I willed it or not.
Aelyth.
I still disliked the word.
But… I was beginning to entertain the thought. And I suppose I could have done worse.
The ship's kitchen—if one could call it that—was quiet when I entered. Light filtered in on a spectrum calibrated to my preferences, though it shifted subtly the moment she stepped inside behind me. The environment always adjusted for her. I pretended not to notice.
She went straight for the counter unit and summoned something I recognized only because she had insisted on it before and had sighed when she drank it, as if it were a god's gift. Coffee.
The scent was sharp, bitter, grounding. She moved with an ease that hadn't been there yesterday, barefoot, hair loose, wearing clothes that were hers now. I felt her gaze on me without looking.
Something had changed in the way she looked at me. Not with fear or defiance. It was almost… warm. I wondered what had brought that change in her. Without conscious decision, I reached toward her mind, lightly, out of habit more than intent.
And hit a wall. Not resistance. A barricade. Clean. Adaptive. Intentional. Her lips curved without her turning around. "Nice try, spymaster."
I stiffened.
"Shadow-monger," she added brightly. "Void lurker. Whatever ominous title you're feeling today."
I stared at her profile. "How are you doing that?"
She finally turned, blue eyes alight with triumph. "Doing what?"
Blocking me. That should not have been possible. Before I could probe again—more carefully this time—I felt it. A deep probing pressure. Inside my own mind. Not invasive. Curious. Exploratory.
Oh, Fryg.
She gasped at the same moment I did, eyes widening. "Oh shit."
I moved instantly, but she was already there—inside—skimming the surface of my thoughts with the uncoordinated shock of someone who had just discovered they could breathe underwater.
"You are…really screwed up," she blurted, awe and something else—wonder? horror?—twisting her voice. Then her color drained. "Holy shit. Am I actually in your head?"
"Yes," I snapped. "And you need to get out."
With a firm shove of will, I expelled her presence. She toppled back half a step, blinking as if emerging from a dream. We stared at each other in stunned silence.
And then she grinned, slow, mischievous, victorious.
That's when I felt it: her desire, raw and unfiltered, shooting through me like a star flare. My own need snapped into focus, answering her signal with an urgency I hadn't thought possible.
Without thought, I closed the gap between us in two long strides. My hands found her face, my fingers ghosted over her skin that was still warm from the coffee. She didn't pull away; instead, her breath caught, and her eyes fluttered shut for a moment.
She rose onto her toes, tipped forward, and our lips met.
It was hot, fierce, and unrelenting, yet tempered by the slow-building hunger in both our bodies.
Her mouth parted against mine, neither yielding nor challenging, a balance of power and surrender that threatened to shatter every barrier I'd ever known.
When our tongues brushed, it was like an explosion inside me: heat flared, blood thundered, thought fractured into starlight.
I pressed her back against the counter, one hand braced at her hip, the other threading through her loose hair as though I'd always known the curve of her neck under my palm.
For that breath of time—just one heartbeat—there was no Abyss. No Nythor. No prophecy or war or burden weighing on my chest. There was only her, and the terrible, beautiful certainty that with her by my side, I would never turn back.
Suddenly, the ship screamed. Not an alarm. Not a warning chime.
A scream. Metal and energy protested in unison as space itself convulsed around us.
I tore my mouth from hers an instant before the deck lurched violently to the side.
Nadine gasped, and her fingers dug into my shirt as gravity spiked, then vanished entirely.
The counter slammed into my hip as I twisted, dragging her with me, my arm locked around her waist just as the world inverted.
"What—" she started.
The lights flared, dimmed, then flared again in a spectrum I hadn't seen since—
No!
This was different. It had to be. The stars beyond the viewport were bending.
Not warping. Not streaking. They folded, like reflections on disturbed water, ripples raced outward from a point that should not have existed.
My aura snapped tight around me without conscious command, shadows clawed outward as a pressure hit my senses, not mass, not gravity, but attention.
"Nadine," I called sharply, already moving us away from the counter as the ship bucked again. "Hold on."
"I am holding on!" she snapped back. Her voice was tight but steady, even as the floor tried to throw us apart.
The next impact was worse. Gravity surged tenfold, crushing down on us like a giant's hand. Nadine cried out as her knees buckled. I caught her fully this time, bracing my stance, my boots bit into the deck as inertial dampeners howled in protest.
The storm bloomed outside. Bands of distorted spacetime collided in overlapping waves, luminous arcs of plasma tore through the void like lightning with no clouds to anchor it. Energy cascaded across nothingness, tearing sensor readings into lies and contradictions.
"This isn't possible," Nadine breathed, staring past me at the viewport. "Space doesn't behave like this."
"No," I agreed grimly, hauling her closer as the ship shuddered again. "It doesn't."
The deck dropped out from under us. Gravity inverted, then snapped back with brutal force. Nadine cried out as the floor tried to tear her away. I twisted, planting my boots hard, one arm locked around her waist as storage units ripped free from their mounts and slammed into the far wall.
"We need to get to the bridge," I urged, still fully aware of the sweet scent emanating from her.
She didn't argue. That alone told me how bad this was. Another shockwave hit, sharper this time, throwing us sideways. I caught the edge of the counter with one hand, as metal screamed beneath my grip, then shoved us toward the corridor as emergency lighting flared crimson.
The ship listed, not rolled, not pitched, but dragged, as if hooked by another ship that was testing how much force we could endure before tearing loose. Nadine staggered but stayed upright, and her fingers remained fisted in my shirt as the ship lurched again. Her breath came fast, uneven.
"What is that?" she demanded, panic breaking through her control. "Is that a— a storm? In space? Dravok, that shouldn't exist!"
Another violent shudder ripped through the galley, more cabinets tearing free from their mounts as something outside continued to drag at us. I shoved the door controls hard, forcing the hatch open just as a blast of compressed air roared through the room, flinging loose objects.
"Move," I snapped.
She didn't argue.
We ran.
The corridor bucked under our feet, inertial dampeners fighting a losing battle as gravity surged and collapsed in violent pulses. Walls flexed. Panels sparked. Somewhere deep in the ship, systems howled as reality itself refused to hold a single shape.
The storm responded.
The bridge doors slid open just as another shockwave slammed into the ship. I dragged Nadine inside and threw her toward the nearest crash brace as the deck pitched hard beneath us.
The command console flared to life under my hands.
Projections tore themselves apart as sensor feeds contradicted one another.
Space ahead of us folded and refolded, gravity vectors spiked in violent, uneven pulses.
I rerouted power on instinct, slamming energy into the shields and locking our trajectory before the storm could shear us sideways.
That was when I felt it. The moment I diverted power, the distortion shifted, deliberately. It adjusted—subtly but precisely—as if tasting resistance, learning the contours of our defiance. My blood went cold.
"This isn't a natural phenomenon," I observed, while my fingers flew across the interface as I fought to keep us aligned. "It's adaptive."
Nadine braced against the console as the ship bucked again. Her head snapped toward me. "You mean it's—"
"Watching," I finished.
Another violent surge threw us sideways.
Consoles flared, and projections stuttered as time dilation spiked unevenly across the hull.
For a split second, the ship existed in two vectors at once—here and not—and Nadine sucked in a sharp breath, clutching my arm as the world tried to tear itself apart.
Then something in her shifted. The panic sharpened into focus. She leaned over the projection, her eyes tracking the chaos with sudden, terrifying clarity. "Dravok," she cried, low and urgent now, "this storm isn't random."
"I know."
"No," she snapped, shaking her head. "I mean—look at this." She pulled a secondary readout forward, fingers moving faster than I would have thought possible under that kind of stress. "The harmonic frequencies, they're changing after you correct course. Every adjustment you make, it answers."