Chapter 30
ROXY
The compound unravels behind us like a parade falling apart after the band leaves.
Guards shout orders no one obeys. Trucks rumble. Drones buzz overhead like nervous hornets. Someone’s crying near the southeast gate—sharp, wet sobs that sound like a plug’s been pulled on their whole world.
I don’t look back.
Not even once.
Vrok walks beside me. Not touching. Not speaking. Just… there.
His steps are uneven. Favoring the left leg. Shoulders stiff, jaw locked, eyes forward like he’s still waiting for the trap to spring.
He’s free. But not.
Not yet.
The dirt road stretches ahead, winding back toward the perimeter. The same one he came tearing in on like a human wrecking ball. Now it’s just a path between two lives. One we nearly died in. One we still don’t know how to live in.
I stop at the edge of the ridge.
Hooves ships glint in the sky above, sluggish and uncertain, like predators being called home mid-feast. One by one, they lift off—leaving scorch marks and churned earth behind.
Kluzderfuvv peeks through the horizon haze. Smoke still curls from a collapsed water tower, and one of the wind vanes leans at a weird angle like it gave up halfway through a turn. But it’s still there.
Still breathing.
Behind me, I hear Vrok inhale like he’s about to say something.
I turn first.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. “What—”
“You don’t get to play the noble, brooding soldier right now,” I cut in, stepping closer. “You don’t get to stare stoically into the middle distance and pretend this wasn’t the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen you pull.”
He blinks, caught off guard. “Roxy—”
“No. You left.”
“I had to.”
“No, you chose to.”
He flinches at that. Not visibly. Not to someone who doesn’t know him. But I do. I see it in the tightness of his throat. The slight angle of his shoulders. He looks down.
“I couldn’t watch her hurt you,” he says finally.
“That wasn’t your choice.”
“She would’ve gutted you. On screen. In front of everyone.”
“So you thought dying by yourself would fix that?”
“I thought maybe it would… distract her. Change the script. Make me the problem.”
I shake my head slowly, heat rising under my skin.
“I’m not a problem to solve, Vrok. I’m your partner. Or I thought I was.”
“You are.”
“Then stop trying to protect me by leaving me behind. That’s not partnership. That’s martyrdom dressed up like romance.”
He’s quiet again.
I let the silence stretch this time, make him sit in it.
“You didn’t trust me,” I say, softer now. “Not really. You trusted your pain. Your guilt. Your fear. But not me.”
“I did trust you.”
“No. You trusted the idea of me. The symbol. The legend. Not the woman standing in front of you.”
He lifts his head then, eyes locking on mine.
“I know who you are.”
“Then stop trying to save me from my own damn story.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
No wind.
No voices.
Just two people who keep nearly dying for each other but haven’t figured out how to live with each other yet.
Finally, he breathes out. “I’m sorry.”
I nod once.
“Good.”
He steps closer. Not touching. Just close enough I can smell the dirt and sweat and blood still drying on his collar.
“Next time,” he says, “we do it your way.”
“No,” I correct. “Next time, we do it together.”
His mouth quirks—half smile, half wince. “Even if it’s a suicide mission?”
“Especially then.”
I reach out and take his hand.
It’s calloused. Rough. Scarred. Familiar.
He squeezes once, like an apology written in pressure.
Behind us, the last of the Hooves transport ships lifts into orbit. The roar fades quickly. Quieter than I expected.
We start walking.
Toward the town.
Toward the chaos we helped cause.
Tebbles meets us at the outer wall, looking ten years older and twice as wrung out. His shirt is soaked through. His beard is singed on one side. But he grins when he sees us.
“About damn time,” he mutters, ushering us inside.
Rebuilding has already started. Sort of. People are yelling. Kids are patching panels that shouldn’t be touched. Someone’s trying to rewire a main junction using stripped speaker cable and a fork.
It’s a mess.
But it’s a living mess.
And nobody’s dead today.
That’s something.
I spend the afternoon helping where I can—patching wiring, rerouting power, scolding two teenagers trying to ride a half-functional loader drone like a hoverboard. Vrok shadows me the whole time, saying little, doing plenty.
His hands move slower now. More careful.
Like he’s remembering how not to crush everything he touches.
By sundown, the worst of the damage is under control.
And I’m exhausted.
Bone-deep.
The kind of tired that sinks into your marrow and makes you wonder if the world ever really stops spinning or if you just get better at not falling off.
Vrok finds me on the roof of the comms building, watching the first stars bleed through the dusk.
He sits beside me.
Quiet.
After a while, he says, “They’ll rebuild without us.”
I nod. “They will.”
“Do we stay?”
I don’t answer right away.
I think of the deserts. The war zones. The legends. The quiet between explosions. The way his hand felt in mine this morning. The way my heart didn’t stop even when everything else did.
“No,” I say finally. “We don’t.”
He turns his head, brows raised.
“We go back to Syfer,” I say.
He nods once.
Like he already knew.
We sit in silence until the sky goes fully black.
And then we leave.
No ceremony.
No fanfare.
Just two people, walking forward.
Together.