34. Rethan #2
Jessa checks each household seal twice, including the remote relays, before she reads the final count.
Her voice trembles. “Sixty-five in favor. Three abstentions. None opposed.”
Salo turns aside to the other adjudicators. Sen stands very still. Corvek remains absent from display, which troubles me more than any objection.
At last Salo speaks.
“Preliminary recognition granted. Solaris Valley emergency continuity panel is accepted for purposes of this proceeding pending full procedural review. Miss Hartwell is not sole representative. Standing challenge against resident participation is denied.”
The hall exhales.
Lucy closes her eyes for half a second.
Only half.
Salo continues. “However, due to conflict objections, Specialist Veyr’s contact with the panel remains restricted during active hearing periods.”
The relief dims.
There is Helix’s small victory, preserved inside the loss.
I lower my head. “Understood.”
Lucy opens her eyes and looks at me across the room.
No touch.
No private word.
No comfort Helix can harvest.
Only the bond, quiet and unrecorded, saying what law cannot.
We are still here.
Then Torren’s voice bursts through the cistern feed.
“Everyone needs to see this.”
Salo gives a sharp nod. “Route the cistern feed to the main display.”
Jessa moves fast.
The sealed cylinder appears beneath the neutral shield. Preservation Officer Kell stands beside it, gloved and rigid. A surface scan rotates above the field image.
Torren speaks again, lower now.
“The registry just responded to the quorum vote.”
The cylinder’s black surface has changed.
One line of script glows beneath the cup, seed, and grave.
I read it before the translator finishes.
When all hands answer, open.
The hearing adjourns for the night.
Not victory. Not defeat. A pause. Helix could not stop the panel, and the panel could not force the registry open. The cylinder remains sealed under neutral custody, and Salo has ordered all parties to rest before morning arguments.
Rest.
The word feels impossible.
I find Lucy in the small storage room behind the council chamber, where someone has left a cot, a pitcher of water, and a blanket folded with the precision of someone who knew sleep would not come easily.
She stands with her back to me, one hand braced against the shelf, her shoulders tight with exhaustion.
I close the door.
“You should rest,” I say.
“I know.”
“You will not.”
She turns, and the weight in her eyes is worse than anger. “I cannot stop thinking about the cylinder. When all hands answer, open. What if we answered wrong? What if Helix finds a way to claim the registry before we can open it?”
I cross to her slowly. “Then we find a way to open it first.”
“Rethan—”
“We will.”
I reach for her, and she comes into my arms as if she has been waiting for permission to fall. Her forehead presses against my chest, and I feel the tremor that runs through her, the tension she has held for too long.
“I am so tired,” she whispers.
“I know.”
“I am afraid.”
“So am I.”
She pulls back to look at me. “You do not sound afraid.”
“Fear does not require volume to exist.”
Lucy’s hand finds my chest, just above my heart. “I can feel it. Through the bond. You are scared too.”
I cover her hand with mine. “I am afraid of losing you to a tribunal decision, a legal trick, or the weight of this fight. I am not afraid of admitting it.”
Her eyes fill. “Rethan.”
“I choose you,” I say. “Before the hearing. After it. If Helix wins. If it does not. I choose you.”
She fists a hand in my tunic and pulls me down.
The kiss is not gentle. It is the kiss of a woman holding everything together who needs one moment to let go. I meet her with matching urgency, my hands finding her waist, pulling her closer.
“Lock the door,” she says against my mouth.
I do not argue.
The latch turns, and I am back before she can miss me. Lucy has already pushed the blanket aside and perched on the cot’s edge, reaching for me.
“Lucy—”
“I need you.” Her voice breaks. “I need something that is not this.”
I kneel before her, my hands on her knees. “Open your eyes for me.”
She does.
“You are not only possible in crisis,” I say. “You are possible in every moment. This moment. The one after. The ones Helix cannot touch.”
Her breath catches.
I rise to kiss her again, and this time I let myself be less careful.
My hands work the fastening of her jacket, pushing it from her shoulders.
The fabric falls away, and I pull her closer, my mouth tracing the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, the hollow where her pulse beats wild and fast. She tilts her head back, giving me more access, and I take it.
Lucy’s fingers work at the fastenings of my tunic, impatient and trembling. “You wear too many layers.”
“Pi’rell formal attire is designed for dignity, not convenience.”
“Then lose the dignity.”
I pull the tunic over my head and let it fall to the floor. Her hands find my chest immediately, tracing the bioluminescent patterns that have risen to the surface of my skin, glowing faintly in the dim storage room light.
“You glow for me,” she says.
“Only for you.”
She presses her palm flat against my chest, right over my heart, and the bond hums between us. “I can feel you through this.”
“Yes.”
“Is it always this intense?”
“Only with you.”
Lucy pulls me closer, and my mouth finds hers again, deeper this time, hungrier. My hands find the fastening of her trousers, and she lifts her hips to help me, the fabric sliding down her thighs. I break the kiss to look at her.
The bruises are still there. The marks of the crash. The evidence of everything Helix tried to take from her. But beneath the damage, she is beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with symmetry or convention. She is fierce and alive and choosing me.
“You are staring,” she says.
“I am memorizing.”