Chapter 32 Nadine
I saw him the moment the door slid fully open.
Dravok lay on the containment bed, utterly still, strangely vulnerable to the restraint fields humming faintly around him.
He didn't stir. Didn't breathe in any way I could see.
For one horrifying second, my mind refused to accept that he was alive at all.
My heart lurched painfully.
"Oh—" The sound caught in my throat as instinct took over. I stepped forward, reaching for him without thinking. I needed to touch him. Needed to feel something—warmth, breath, proof.
"Nadine." Xandros's hand closed around my arm, firm and unyielding. "Don't touch him."
I turned on him, ready to fight, ready to ignore every warning—I stopped myself. Not because I agreed. Because I knew they would haul me back if I tried. Physically. Without hesitation. And because even through the panic, a deeper fear rooted me in place.
Dravok looked… wrong.
His aura—once so proud, so unmistakably his—was still black, but diminished.
Thinned. Like a great fire starved of oxygen, burning inward instead of outward.
The edges flickered unevenly, stripped of the gold I remembered, stripped of the vitality that had once filled a room before he ever spoke. It hurt to look at him.
"Oh, Dravok," I whispered, the words barely sounding. "What have they done to you?"
The answer came immediately. Not from Xandros. Not from the room. From the bond.
It surged suddenly, violently, and the world tilted as everything I'd been holding back slammed into me all at once: his rage, his confusion, the brutal force of something inside him pushing and pulling with relentless intent.
He was unconscious. But he wasn't gone. Whatever had its claws in him was very, very awake.
I staggered, my breath left me in sharp gasps as the bond flared brighter, tighter, no longer thinning but straining, like it was trying to reconnect across a widening gulf.
He was fighting.
Hard.
I knew with terrifying certainty that if I didn't help him now, there would be nothing left to save. But he was fighting. Not vaguely. Not passively. He was fighting like his existence depended on it.
I staggered forward, barely aware of the room anymore, of the guards, of the weapons trained on him. All of that fell away as the bond pulled tight, no longer thinning but stretching, tentative and fragile and growing.
"Oh," I whispered. "Dravok…"
I could feel him, confused, furious, drowning in voices that weren't his. I could feel the strain in him, the way every part of him was being pulled in opposite directions, torn between instinct and something deeper he couldn't remember but refused to surrender.
He was losing ground. I knew it with terrifying certainty.
I didn't think.
I just reached.
I sent my mind outward along the bond, pouring everything I had into it: focus, will, desperation, love I hadn't known how to name until it hurt like this.
The effort slammed into me instantly, a wave of pressure that buckled my knees.
I sank to the floor with a sharp gasp, palms pressed to the cold metal, sweat broke out across my skin as if I'd been dropped into fire.
"Take it," I whispered through clenched teeth. "All of it. I don't care. Just—take it."
The bond flared brighter, hotter, no longer a thread but a conduit.
Suddenly, I saw it. The darkness inside him wasn't abstract.
It wasn't a shadow or a void. It was him.
A mirror image, sharp-edged and perfect, made of rage and certainty and everything he'd been taught to be without balance.
Same strength. Same presence. Same face.
Horror froze me in place.
"Oh god," I breathed. "No…"
The darkness turned toward me and smiled. Not cruelly. Knowingly.
You see now, it said without words. I am not the invader. I am the truth.
Just for a heartbeat, my resolve faltered. The darkness laughed. The sound reverberated through my skull, cold and vast and triumphant. It pushed back against me, hard enough that my vision swam and my hands slipped on the floor. I couldn't fight that.
I couldn't erase him. He was Dravok.
But then he pushed back. Hard. Not at me. At the darkness.
At Him. The real him.
I felt it like a shockwave, raw, furious, incandescent resistance slammed into the mirror image with a ferocity that took my breath away. Not controlled. Not elegant. Personal. Get away from her.
The force of it tore through the bond, through me, through the darkness itself. The mirror image cracked, fractured like glass under too much pressure. There was a sound—not heard, but felt—a whoosh. Like a vacuum collapsing. Suddenly, the darkness was gone.
The backlash hit me all at once.
I cried out as the connection snapped back into myself, and the world tilted violently as every ounce of strength left me in a rush. My arms gave out. My forehead struck the floor as everything went black at the edges.
In the distance—far away now—I heard voices.
Alarm.
Shouting.
"Shoot him!" Xandros' voice cut through the haze, sharp with panic.
No! The word tore through my mind with everything I had left. NO. DON'T!
Someone shouted back. Someone else swore.
Ashley's voice rose above the chaos. "No! Don't shoot!"
I felt Xandros's concern, his certainty that he was about to lose control of the situation, that whatever came next would be irreversible.
But no one fired. No one moved. The silence stretched, charged and trembling.
As consciousness threatened to slip away, I felt the bond, no longer frayed, no longer thin.
Steady.
Alive.
Binding Dravok and me irrevocably.
The power of the backlash left me empty. I stayed on my knees, palms braced against the floor, gasping for air like I'd surfaced from deep water too fast. My vision swam, sweat slicked my spine, and every muscle trembled as if I'd run until my body forgot how to stop.
The room was in chaos.
Xandros was shouting, actual shouting now, sharp and furious, a stream of curses. His soldiers stood frozen in place, weapons half-raised, eyes wide with confusion and dawning fear. None of them moved. Neither did Ashley.
She stood perfectly still beside me, eyes locked on Dravok. Her breath was shallow, as if she was afraid that even blinking might break whatever fragile equilibrium had just slammed into place. It took me a moment to understand: I did this.
The thought hit harder than the psychic backlash. I hadn't meant to. I didn't even know how. But somehow—through panic and desperation and raw refusal—I had locked them all in place. Not frozen time, not with a power like Dravok's.
Something else.
Something mine.
"Oh God," I whispered hoarsely. "I don't—I don't know how to undo it."
Fear crawled up my spine. What if I couldn't? What if I'd trapped them like this—Dravok included—because I didn't know how to let go?
My gaze snapped back to him. He was still lying on the bed. Still restrained. Still terrifyingly still… except… his eyes were open. And it wasn't the black void I had seen in them last. They were the deepest amber I had ever seen. The world narrowed to that single fact.
"Dravok!" I scrambled forward, ignoring the weakness in my limbs, my hands sliding on the floor as I dragged myself to his side. I reached him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pressing my forehead against his chest, desperate for warmth, for proof.
"Oh, Dravok," I choked. "I'm here. I'm here."
He didn't move. For one unbearable second, panic clawed up my throat, then he groaned. Low. Rough. Like the sound had been dragged up from somewhere deep and painful. Relief hit me so hard I nearly collapsed again.
"I can't move," he said—or didn't say, it was hard to tell at this point what was happening in my mind and what I was actually seeing and hearing. Either way, the words bloomed, familiar and intimate and achingly him.
Tears blurred my vision. "I don't know how to release you," I cried. "Or them. I don't even know how I did this in the first place."
I do. The answer came gently, steady despite the pain threading through it.
Listen. I stilled instantly, clutching him tighter, focusing with everything I had left.
You didn't trap them. You aligned them. You forced their intent into phase.
The words shouldn't have made sense. Yet they did.
Let go of the pressure, he continued. Don't push. Just… stop holding.
My breath shuddered out of me. I closed my eyes and did exactly that. I released the strain I hadn't even realized I was maintaining, the desperate, rigid focus that had locked everything in place. I let it dissolve, imagining my grip loosening, my mind stepping back.
The effect was immediate.
Motion rushed back into the room like a wave breaking. Xandros staggered a step, swearing viciously as his body unlocked. Weapons lowered with clatters and startled curses. Ashley sucked in a sharp breath, and her hand flew to her chest.
Xandros spun toward me, fury and alarm warring on his face. "What the hell did you—"
"Take the fields off him," I demanded, my voice raw but unshaking.
He stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "I don't think that is a good idea."
"Do it."
"Nadine—"
"Do it," I repeated, louder now. "Or I paralyze the entire ship."
The words came out before I could stop them. They hung in the air, heavy and irrevocable. I froze. Did I just… horror flickered through me, not at the threat, but at the certainty behind it. I meant it.
Somewhere between Cronack and the Abyss, between love and terror and loss, something in me had shifted. I didn't know what I was capable of anymore. But I had a feeling that there weren't many lines I wouldn't cross.
Xandros saw it too.
My resolve must have been written all over my face, my posture. He hesitated only a second longer.
"Stand down," he snapped to his soldiers. Then, reluctantly, "Drop the fields. Slowly."
The hum around Dravok changed pitch, faded.
I held him tighter as the restraints released, as his body finally responded to gravity and breath and weight again.
He exhaled, long and shuddering. I pressed my lips to his temple, tears soaking into his skin.
"Stay," I whispered, my voice breaking. "Please. Just… stay."
His presence brushed against my mind, weak, but warm. Steady. I'm here.
Behind us, Xandros watched with a mixture of awe and dread. And I knew—with a clarity that terrified me—that whatever I had just become… There was no going back.