Chapter 4
Selena
The royal lobby felt too quiet without him.
Zirene’s shadow still clung to the edges of my vision—phantom darkness that had wrapped around me moments ago, fierce and desperate and full of promises he might not be able to keep. His kiss still burned on my lips. His words echoed within me.
Then come to bed with me. Let me have you while I still can.
He’d gone to give his final commands. To prepare for a war that would tear him away from everything we’d built.
My palm found my belly—the slight swell that was becoming harder to hide. Kaede’s daughter grew inside me. My clan was fracturing. War had found us.
And all I could think about was the faint thread pulsing at the edge of my mind.
Not one of my bonds. Not crimson like Zyxel’s new thread, or the fierce protective heat of Kaede’s, or the steady warmth of my Circuli nestmates. This was something different: thin, fragile, threaded with pain I hadn’t asked to feel.
Ryzen.
“He’s been brooding since boarding,” Kaede pathed. “Unstable. Dangerous.”
As if I didn’t already know. As if I couldn’t feel the way his energy sputtered through that faint connection, erratic as a dying heartbeat.
Zyxel waited near the lobby’s entrance, his massive naga body coiled with deliberate stillness.
Crimson scales caught the ambient lighting, the serpentine length of him taking up more space than seemed possible.
His chartreuse eyes tracked me with an intensity that still made my breath catch—part scholar’s curiosity, part predator’s focus.
He’d stayed close since Zirene left, sensing my turmoil through our new bond before I’d even named it.
Eshe stood at attention near the door, armored and alert, ready to escort me wherever I decided to go.
I was about to do something that would complicate everything.
Again.
“Zyxel.” I crossed to where he waited, pressing my palm against his cheek “I need to speak with Ryzen.”
Our bond pulsed with his concern. He’d felt my decision before I’d made it—maybe even before I had. That was the nature of these connections. They revealed us to each other in ways that should have been terrifying.
Should have been. Wasn’t.
I didn’t shield him, leaving our connection open like my other clanmates. He needed to get used to being a part of something more, and we both needed to learn more about each other. And fast.
The universe didn’t slow down because I wanted it to.
Was this another test from the Stars? Or something written by the Fates?
“You’re going to him.” Not a question.
“I have to.” I held his gaze, willing him to understand. “Meet me in the nestroom after. I need to do this alone.”
His forked tongue flicked against my wrist—tasting my resolve, maybe. Or memorizing my scent for the hundredth time. “He’s not stable, enax. His spirit daggers may slice you—”
“I know.”
“His twin bond was severed. For his species, that kind of loss—”
“I know.” I rose on my toes, pressing a kiss to his jaw. “I understand loss, Zyxel. Better than most.”
Something flickered through our connection. Not quite agreement. Not quite acceptance. But trust—fragile and new and fierce enough to let me go anyway.
“I’ll be in the nestroom.” He sighed, nodding. “Waiting. If anything feels wrong—”
“You’ll feel it.” I stepped back, letting my hand trail down his chest before pulling away. “Trust the bond. Trust me.”
He didn’t argue. His tail uncoiled, massive body shifting toward the corridor that led to the residential wing—to the nestroom where I might have a sliver of normalcy away from it all.
But his eyes followed me as I turned toward the opposite hall, and through our thread, I felt the weight of his worry like a stone pressing against my ribs.
Eshe moved to follow.
“Beacon.” My guard captain’s voice carried the particular tone she reserved for moments when she thought I was being reckless. Which meant most moments. Perhaps she’d heard about how trouble was attracted to me by Kaede. “Allow me to escort you.”
“That won’t be necessary.” I kept my voice gentle but firm. “I’m safe aboard the ShadowClaw, Eshe. We’ll be on Destima in time for dinner.”
“Beacon—”
I turned to face her. Eshe was Aldawi—tall, swift, lethal in every way that mattered. She hadn’t been assigned to me. She’d sought me out. Fought for the right to stand here. Earned her position through blood, discipline, and refusal to back down.
She was protecting me barely a day after claiming her place as the Captain of my Royal Guard, leaving her mate and family behind without hesitation. And now she stood between me and the universe like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She deserved honesty.
We were halfway down the corridor toward Ryzen’s quarters when I stopped short.
“I’m going to check on him,” I said, my voice clipped. “You’re not needed for this. You’re dismissed.”
Eshe halted immediately, but tension snapped through her frame. “Your Majesty—Ryzen is Verya. He’s unstable. If he loses control—”
I turned on her.
“Hold your tongue.”
The words landed sharp enough to make her blink.
I stepped closer, meeting her gaze head-on.
“Q is Quaww. He’s co-piloting this ship, and he’s proven himself loyal to us.
Ryzen is no different.” My voice didn’t rise—but it hardened.
“If you’re going to be captain of my Royal Guard, you will leave your prejudice at the nearest airlock. ”
Eshe stiffened then lowered her head, exposing her neck. “My apology, Beacon. I spoke out of concern. His condition is… volatile.”
“I know,” I said. “And I trust him anyway. Right now, he needs someone who won’t look at him like a threat.” I tapped two fingers against my temple. “My mates will know if something happens to me. I’m not unprotected.”
She hesitated, clearly torn, then straightened. “Understood.”
“You’re dismissed until we land,” I added firmly.
Eshe bowed—sharp and precise—and stepped back. “As you command.”
Ryzen’s quarters were on the far end of the residential wing—as far from the rest of the passengers as the ShadowClaw’s layout allowed. Kaede’s doing, probably.
I stopped outside the door.
Through the metal door between us, his emotions crashed against my shields in waves—projected and overwhelming. Grief. Rage. Panic. Loss. The terrible, echoing silence where something vital had been ripped away.
I knew that silence.
I’d lived in it for years—alone in white rooms, strapped to tables, surrounded by beings who saw me as a failed experiment instead of a person. The absence of connection. The certainty that no one was coming.
That no one cared.
My hand found the door panel before I could talk myself out of it. The lock disengaged with a soft click.
He hadn’t bothered to secure it. That told me everything I needed to know about his current state.
The lights were dimmed to near nothing. Only the glow of his spirit daggers drifted through the room, pale and wrong, catching on the emerald runes carved into his skin and mixing with the cold wash of stars sliding past the viewport.
The air felt overheated—thick with scorched metal and burned power.
Ryzen stood at the glass, motionless, silhouette cut sharp against the streaking cosmos of transit space.
Kaede had warned me but seeing him like this still hooked under my ribs. He looked… abandoned. Not by the clan—by the universe. Like he was staring into the void because the void was the only thing that understood what had been taken.
His spirit daggers orbited in erratic patterns—emerald-lit blades carving drunken loops through the air.
Not fireflies.
Warnings.
Threats made physical.
The runes on his pale skin flickered wildly, pulsing bright, then guttering, then flaring again. I found myself counting the beats without meaning to. Uneven. Chaotic.
He didn’t turn when I entered.
Didn’t acknowledge me at all.
But beneath the flood of his emotion, I felt the instant he registered me—something sharp punching up through the chaos. Surprise, maybe. Or fear. It was hard to separate anything cleanly when the rest of him was screaming at full volume.
“Ryzen.”
No response. The daggers didn’t pause their chaotic dance.
I crossed the room anyway.
One step. Two. Three.
Each one drew me closer to the spinning blades—and closer to the grief rolling off him in waves so dense it felt like heat. My shields flexed under the pressure, not to shut him out, just to keep my lungs working. To keep my mind from sliding under.
He’d reached for me once.
A little over a year ago, across impossible distance, when he’d burned everything he had into a spirit bomb meant to save his people. When he’d been dissolving—stardust and ruin—and his mind had clawed for an anchor.
He’d found me.
Neither of us had understood why. Maybe we still didn’t.
But I understood loss. I understood watching your world go up in flames while your body stayed stubbornly alive, helpless to stop it.
I lowered myself to my knees in front of him.
The daggers paused.
They didn’t fall. They didn’t vanish. They simply…
held, suspended in the air, the moment refusing to exhale.
Emerald light slid over my skin, turning my hands and cheekbones into something strange.
One blade hovered inches from my throat—close enough that I felt the hum of psionic energy against my pulse.
A warning. A test.
Ryzen’s gaze finally found mine.
Empty, my mind supplied immediately.
Hollowed out in a way that made my chest ache. Whatever fire had lived in him—the steel, the protective fury—had been drowned in the absence where his twin should’ve been. A shape cut out of him and left bleeding.
“I know what it’s like.” My voice came out soft. Steady. The voice I used with my cubs when they needed comforting. “To lose someone.”
Something flickered in those empty eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or the first crack in the wall he’d built around his devastation.
“You don’t.” His voice scraped raw, unused. “You can’t.”