Chapter 24
Ashley's quarters—office, really—sat just off the command spine, close enough to the bridge that the walls faintly vibrated with the flagship's constant readiness.
There were no soft corners here. Nothing that screamed home.
Just function disguised as comfort: a table, two chairs, a wall of stacked datapads and sealed briefcases marked with Earth languages I recognized at a glance.
She offered me tea. At first, I didn't drink it. I told myself it was nerves. The normal kind, the kind that came when you were a human on an Imperial warship in orbit over a stripped world named Cronack, while the Arkhevari you were… bonded to… walked alone into a Cryon ruin. Normal.
Except nothing about any of this was normal.
Ashley moved with a practiced ease that made the room feel less hostile. She leaned against the desk with her arms crossed, watching me with a look I'd come to recognize in women who'd survived too much: the casual posture of someone who could go from laughter to violence in a single breath.
"So," she said, trying for lightness. "How's it going, being… well. Whatever this is."
I blinked, dragged myself up from the spiral I hadn't realized I'd started. "This?" I echoed.
She gestured vaguely between my collarbone and my wrists, where faint markings threaded beneath my skin like a living constellation. "You and the glowing star tattoos. You and the Arkhevari. You and the universe deciding to be a fever dream."
I exhaled, and the sound almost became a laugh.
Almost. Then it happened. Not a sound. Not a voice.
A sensation, like someone had opened a door in my mind, and cold air rushed in.
My breath stopped, and my vision narrowed as a flicker of something not-my-own scrawled across my thoughts, jagged and fast and utterly wrong.
—not me, not voice, not speaker—
—it listens through me—
—you are brighter—
My skin went cold in a wave. I swayed, catching the edge of the desk before I could tip over. Ashley was instantly at my side.
"Nadine?" Her hand hovered near my elbow, not touching yet, waiting for permission. "Hey. What's wrong?"
I swallowed. My mouth tasted like copper. "I…" My voice didn't come out right. "I don't know."
Ashley's eyes sharpened. "You went pale."
I shook my head once, hard, like I could shake the feeling loose. "Something feels… off," I managed. "Like—like static in the bond. Like something's—" My throat tightened. Like something was… slipping.
The word hit too close to the truth.
Ashley studied me for a beat, then softened her tone. "It might help if you tell me what's really going on."
I looked at her. I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
To take the weight in my chest and set it on the table between us and make it someone else's problem for thirty seconds.
But I knew Dravok liked to keep things close to his heart.
He didn't want the Pandraxians to know too much. He trusted me not to betray him.
"I can't," I said, and hated how small it sounded.
Ashley didn't push. She only nodded slowly, like she understood what it meant to hold a secret because the alternative was worse.
"Okay," she said. "Then tell me what you can."
My markings pulsed. Not the usual low glow, this was brighter, urgent, webbing across my skin like stars trying to spell something I didn't want to read. Ashley's gaze dropped to my throat. Her expression changed.
"Oh," she breathed. "You're glowing."
I followed her eyes and realized the Starmap had brightened enough to reflect off the polished surface of the desk. Fear tore through me with a violence that robbed my breath.
"They've never done that," I whispered.
Ashley's voice turned gentler. "They're… beautiful. Are those your mating marks?"
The word hit wrong and right at the same time. Too intimate for a warship. Too true to deny.
"Starmap," I said absently.
Ashley blinked. "Starmap."
"It's what the bond markings are called," I explained automatically, brain scrambling for anything structured. "The Aelyth bond creates it. The bond—" I swallowed. "It's supposed to stabilize him. And me."
Ashley's brow furrowed. "Supposed to?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because the cold air in my mind hadn't stopped.
It had intensified; threads of someone else's perception slid through the cracks in the bond.
They weren't Dravok's thoughts. Not entirely.
Something… filtered. Distorted. Like a voice being forced through a narrow pipe. —wrong echoes wrong shapes—
—they tried to force it——it watched, learned, waited—
My hands moved without permission. I yanked my palmtop from my pocket and activated it so fast my fingers shook.
Data spilled across the screen, personal logs, abyss readings, Dravok's earlier overlays, anything I'd saved since the storm.
I pulled up the fragments I'd recorded from Nythor's ramblings, the half-mad map sequences that looked like nonsense until you stared too long.
Ashley leaned over my shoulder. "Wow," she murmured. "Can you make sense out of that?"
"I—" My breath hitched. "I can."
That realization struck like ice water. I could.
Because my brain wasn't translating it as language anymore.
It was translating it as pressure. Ashley pointed at a section of the screen, a spiral of star coordinates intersecting with something that looked like a collapsed waveform. "That," she said. "What is that?"
My eyes tracked where she pointed. The spiral wasn't random. It wasn't just a map of Cronack. It was a path. A path straight to Cronack. A descent.
It was a map of intent. My heart began to pound. No, no, no—
I zoomed in. Cross-referenced the coordinates with the ship's current telemetry.
The location Dravok had entered. The caverns beneath the Cryon ruins.
The containment field signature. My stomach dropped.
The pattern wasn't showing where Nythor was.
It was showing where the pressure was pointing. Where it wanted a stronger mind to go.
Another fragment surfaced through the bond, clearer now, like a warning screamed from far away: —not me, not voice, not speaker—it leans through me—you are brighter, stronger—
"Oh no," I whispered again.
Ashley stiffened. "Nadine?"
I didn't look up. I couldn't. I was already pulling older notes, Pandraxian reports, Cryon experimentation archives, and Ceceaux Seris' scribbled observations. I'd thought those were separate threads. They weren't. They were converging into a single, horrifying answer.
Heat becomes pressure.
Pressure becomes behavior.
Behavior becomes preference.
Preference becomes hunger.
I'd said those words to Dravok, but I hadn't realized they were about him, too.
"Oh no," I said again, louder.
Ashley touched my arm this time—firm, grounding. "What? What is it?"
My markings pulsed bright enough that even Ashley's dark uniform caught the reflection.
The bond—the bond felt different. Not gone.
Not severed. Not yet. But… stretching. As if something had wrapped its fingers around Dravok on the other end and was gently, patiently pulling him away from me.
Fear surged so fast I tasted bile. Sadness followed, sudden and sharp, like grief arriving early to a funeral you weren't ready to attend.
"Dravok," I breathed.
Ashley's hand tightened on my arm. "Nadine. Talk to me."
I forced myself to inhale. Exhale. Focus.
"This isn't—" My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. "This isn't the Abyss using Nythor to communicate."
Ashley's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"It's using him to lure," I whispered.
Ashley went still.
"Who is luring whom?" she demanded, already knowing the answer from the way my face must have looked.
I couldn't say it. That would make it too real. But the bond was slipping, and in that slippage, I felt something else, an unfamiliar steadiness creeping into Dravok's aura. Not calm. A cold alignment. Like a blade being honed.
"He's not…" I shook my head, denial trying to claw its way in. "He's not supposed to—his aura was gold, Ashley. It was—he was—"
"What?" she demanded, voice sharper now. "Nadine, what is happening?"
My eyes scanned the data again, and I saw the missing piece that made my blood turn to ice. The pull. The spiral. The containment. The pressure. This was a trap designed for an Arkhevari. Nythor wasn't the speaker or conductor. He was the bait.
Dravok wasn't the rescuer.
He was the prize.
"Oh no," I whispered, and this time it came out like a prayer.
Ashley's face hardened into soldier-focus. "What do you need?"
I couldn't breathe. Because the bond wasn't just slipping. It was being rewritten. The Starmap under my skin flared, lines brightened, then thinned, as if the constellation itself was being stretched toward a point that wasn't me. And with it came a quiet, devastating terror: What if he forgot me?
Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. What if the thing pulling him down pulled him far enough that Nadine became just a name attached to data? A concept. An inconvenience. I'd watched him earlier fight his own instincts. I'd watched him learn to soften. To laugh. To touch me like he meant it.
If something took that—
If something took him—
My throat closed.
Ashley's voice cut through the spiral. "Nadine."
I forced my eyes to hers.
"What," she said again, quieter this time, "is happening to Dravok?"
I swallowed the ache in my chest and spoke anyway. "He's being enthralled."
Ashley's pupils widened. I knew that look.
I had given it to people a hundred times when I thought they were out of their minds.
I didn't care. "If I'm right," I continued, my words tumbling out now because stopping meant falling apart, "then the Harrowed One isn't just a consequence.
It's strategic. It's not trying to speak through Nythor—it's trying to ensnare a stronger Arkhevari so it can anchor itself into reality through him. "
Ashley's jaw tightened, and though she still looked at me as if I'd lost my marbles, her strategic mind was working. Something I was eternally grateful for. "So we have to pull him out."
"Yes," I agreed, not liking how my voice shook. "Before the bond breaks completely."
Ashley reached for the comm on her wrist. "Xandros," she snapped the moment it connected. "Get in here. Now."
A beat. Then his voice, "Ashley?"
"Now," she repeated, and he didn't argue.
I stared back at my palmtop, fingers flying as I searched for any sign, any variable, any way to measure what was happening. The Starmap pulsed again.
Brighter.
Then thinner.
And through the bond, faint as a dying signal, I felt Dravok's attention slide, like someone turning his head away from the sound of my voice.
A new kind of calm settled in its place.
Not his father's golden aura. Not the warmth he'd found with me.
Something darker. Something that felt like destruction. My vision blurred.
"Dravok," I whispered into the bond, pushing my awareness toward him with everything I had. Come back.
For a moment, there was nothing. Then, faintly—so faintly I might have imagined it—I felt the edge of him, distant and cold. And underneath it, a pressure that didn't belong to him at all.
Watching.
Waiting.
Learning.
My hands trembled around the palmtop.
"Oh no," I said one last time, and it wasn't denial anymore. It was cold certainty. Whatever was down there with him wasn't trying to kill him. It was trying to irrevocably change him.