Chapter Seventeen
Elara
I wake to Rhazek Vonn arguing quietly with a wall.
The medical chamber at Vonn Akra is dim, lit by silver forest light through the tall windows and thin gold veins crawling through the black stone walls. The old fortress hums under me. Not loud. Not like The Black Star, who has the personality of a dramatic guard dog with boundary issues.
Vonn Akra hums like something buried very deep has rolled over in its sleep.
Rhazek turns from the wall.
His armor is gone, replaced with dark trousers and a fitted black tunic that leaves his arms bare.
The handprint mark on his forearm is still visible, glowing faintly in the low light.
His hair is half-braided, half-loose, as if someone started making him presentable and then gave up because he looked threatening either way.
The room is empty except for us. No Seryn. No Nima. For once.
“Stop fighting the wall and come here,” I say.
He does. I hook two fingers in the front of his tunic and pull him down until his mouth is on mine. Sleep-sour. Hungry anyway. The fortress light is thin on his face. For a few seconds I get only that: heat, breath, the handprint mark on his forearm glowing against my hip where he steadies himself.
“Elara. Your ribs—”
“Are not invited to veto.”
I shove the blanket down. The medical platform is cool against my bare thighs.
He is already hard when I open his trousers, which would be funny if I had the energy to be smug about it.
I take him out. He is hot in my hand, ridged, leaking against my thumb the way he did the first time I learned him.
“You can stop me,” I say against the head of him.
His hand settles in my hair without pushing. “I will not.”
I put my mouth on him before he can turn the rest into a medical decision. Heat and salt. Too much of him, same as always. I take what I can and use my fist for the rest. His breath breaks. “Elara,” he says, ruined. “Your mouth will be the death of every command I have left.”
I glance up. His eyes are black-gold and wrecked. The half-braid has come loose.
His palm slides between my legs and stays there, just pressure, just enough. The heel of his hand finds the place that has been humming since I woke, and he holds it like he is keeping me from falling off the edge of the room.
I rock against that pressure with my mouth still on him. The bond answers in my palm, a warm pull instead of the sternum-pain from the ship. My ribs protest when I lean too far. I adjust. He notices and takes more of his own weight, one knee on the platform, careful even now.
“Stay,” I tell him around him, which is not elegant. He stays.
His taste, the heat of his palm, the quiet of the room: it all builds slowly. I come against his hand with my mouth still on him, shaking through it, marked palm braced on his thigh.
He breaks next. I feel it first in the way his hips lock, then in the heat over my tongue. I swallow. He bows his head until his forehead brushes my hair.
I sit back and point at the wall he was fighting.
“What are you arguing about?”
A line of gold script appears on the wall beside him.
Maternal authority required for nursery access.
Rhazek fastens his trousers while I clean my mouth and pull the blanket over my legs. By the time the door chimes, I have almost stopped looking smug. Seryn enters with a tray, and Rhazek gives me the update.
He plays the fragment of Varesh and Sarkan’s conversation at the gate.
“Rude but not shocking,” I say.
I sit up slowly. “What can Varesh do?”
Rhazek answers cleanly. “He can petition the High Council to invoke emergency removal under continuity law. He needs majority support from the ruling seats or proof that you are in immediate danger under my protection.”
“Which Sarkan tried to create.”
“Yes.”
“And if Varesh gets the votes?”
Jorren’s voice comes from the doorway. “He can order royal forces to remove you from Vonn Akra.”
I turn.
He waits in the doorway, arms folded. The bruises on his throat are fading.
“Come in. Everyone else is already part of the disaster.”
He steps inside.
“Would The Black Star fight royal forces?” I ask.
Rhazek says, “Yes.”
“Would Vonn Akra?”
Jorren answers, “Also yes.”
“Would that start a civil war?”
Silence.
Fabulous.
“Maiven?” I ask.
Rhazek’s expression shifts. “She has requested to meet with you privately.”
“Why does Maiven want to meet?”
Rhazek’s voice lowers. “She believes you should see Vonn Akra’s memorial nursery before the council reconvenes.”
Seryn adds, “Maiven believes Varesh will use the empty nurseries as emotional pressure. She thinks you should see them without him narrating them.”
I think of the missing children from the Mercy Ark, the babies who never made it onto the survivor list. Milo and his tin of beetle shells. The empty place beside Asha when she wakes.
“I want to see what everyone keeps talking around,” I say. Seryn agrees to come, bringing a chair.
The nursery wing lies behind three sets of doors, two long corridors, one ridiculous bridge over an indoor chasm, and enough black stone to build a whole personality disorder.
Tall windows slice red moonlight across the floor. Gold veins crawl through the walls as we pass, waking ahead of us and dimming behind us. Carved pillars show Dravari figures carrying stars, blades, infants, and what might be ships or bones. Sometimes both. Their art is cheerful like that.
Rhazek walks at my left.
Nima stays at my right, Seryn behind me with the scanner. Jorren leads with two Vonn Akra guards, including Kavren, the older guard from the landing platform.
The farther we go, the quieter Rhazek becomes.
A scent rises through the stone: mineral dust, old incense, something sweet like dried flowers, and beneath that, a faint sterile edge.
The first door opens as we approach. I step through into the nursery wing.
No one touches a panel.
Bone-white stone is veined with gold and faint black lines. After so much dark architecture, the brightness feels almost violent. The ceiling bears constellations I do not know; small gold lights float near the walls.
The nursery has been preserved with obsessive devotion. Tiny alcoves line the walls. Cradles carved from pale mineral rest beneath soft canopies. Murals show horned children running through silver forests, climbing black rocks, sleeping under twin moons.
No toys scattered. No blankets rumpled. No cups spilled. No lullabies. No one calling for a child to come back here right now because you are sticky and why are you sticky.
“Oh,” Nima whispers.
Rhazek stands like a statue carved by someone who hated softness.
I take one step into the nursery.
The floor warms under my feet.
Symbols light the nearest cradle’s rim. Jorren translates softly: “Name. Birth line. Death line.”
This is a graveyard that refused to stop looking like hope.
I step closer.
I touch the edge of the cradle.
“Whose was this?”
Rhazek says, “My sister’s.”
Nima’s hand slips into mine.
I take it without looking.
“What was her name?”
Rhazek’s eyes stay on the cradle.
“Veyra.”
I look at the glowing symbols again. “How long?”
“Nine minutes.”
“Hi, Veyra,” I whisper.
Rhazek turns his head away.
The next cradle lights as we pass.
Names wake around us.
Veyra.
Korren.
Talev.
Nasha.
Orrek.
Sivren.
The sanctum stretches farther than I thought, branching into side chambers and smaller rooms, each preserved, each glowing as we move. Some children lived minutes. Some hours. A few days. One little girl lived four months, and the entire wall around her cradle is carved with flowers.
Nima cries quietly.
Seryn brings the chair beside me. I sit among the glowing names.
The room wants the child the way empty arms want weight.
I press my palm to my stomach and whisper, “You are not responsible for this.”
A guard calls from the far entrance. “Councilors Maiven and Varesh request entry.”
Rhazek turns.
Varesh waits beyond the threshold with Maiven and two council guards. Kavren stands between them and the nursery.
“Councilor Maiven informed me you wished to see the sanctum,” he says.
Maiven’s face tightens. “I informed the council that Elara Quinn chose to view it privately.”
“Privacy is complicated in matters of continuity,” Varesh says.
“Briefly,” I tell him. “Your guards stay outside.” He enters with Maiven.
Varesh looks around the room.
Varesh walks to one of the cradles and places two fingers on its edge. A name lights beneath his hand.
“Whose?” I ask.
Varesh does not look at me.
“My son.”
“How long?” I ask.
His answer is quiet.
“Two days.”
Varesh’s voice changes. “His mother sang to him until her voice failed. The healers said he was strong for a child of our age. They said that each hour was promising. They said many things.”
Varesh turns toward me.
“This is what you must understand, Elara Quinn,” he says. “Our desperation is not abstract. It has names.”
“I’m sorry for your son,” I say. “But these names are not an argument for custody.”
I gesture around the sanctum. “Your children mattered. So did the children on the Mercy Ark. None of them get to become chains.”
Maiven steps forward. “The council reconvenes in one hour. It needs your specific terms, Elara Quinn.”
“Seryn remains my doctor. The council gets safety statements, not my records. No custody or unapproved titles.”
“The survivors decide where they go. Nobody uses them as leverage or interrogates Asha.”
Jorren says, “Witnessed.”
“I’ll receive Maiven once a day, while Seryn says I’m well enough. Sarkan stays away.”
“I will present your terms,” Varesh says.
“Accurately,” Maiven adds.
He turns and walks out of the sanctum.
Maiven leaves after him.
I grip Rhazek’s forearm as dizziness washes through me. “Take me back.”
He lifts me, one arm beneath my knees and the other behind my back.
As he carries me from the nursery sanctum, the cradles dim one by one.
The last cradle to dim is Veyra’s.
Back in medical, Seryn checks my vitals while Nima fixes my crooked drape.
Seryn files the safety statement to council. Maiven confirms receipt. Jorren stays in the hall speaking in low, clipped Dravari with citadel guards.
Then a servant arrives with a tray.
Not one of Rhazek’s crew. A Vonn Akra household attendant, older, with pale horns and careful hands. Jorren checks her credentials before admitting her.
The tray holds water, broth, a small dish of fruit, and a dark cup that smells faintly sweet.
“Councilor Maiven sent this,” the attendant says. “Restorative infusion. For strength before reconvening.”
“Set it down,” Seryn says.
The attendant obeys and leaves.
Nima leans forward. “That smells nice.”
“Do not touch it,” Seryn says.
Seryn lifts the cup with two fingers and runs the scanner over it.
“What?” I ask.
“There is a sedative compound in the infusion.”
“Maiven sent it?” Nima whispers.
Seryn scans again. “The dose would not kill you. It would make you compliant. Drowsy. Suggestible. Easy to move under medical pretext.”
The pod comes back so fast I cannot breathe.
The mark in my palm flares white-gold.
The tiny rhythm inside me stutters.
My hands shake.
I drag air into my lungs until the tiny rhythm steadies again.
“No one drinks anything I don’t watch Seryn test.”
Rhazek’s voice is barely human-shaped through the translator. “Who delivered it?”
“Household attendant,” Jorren says. “Cleared by citadel guard. Tray originated from council courier.”
“Find the courier.”
“Already locked in outer hall.”
I sit up slowly.
“I want the cup preserved,” I say.
Seryn nods. “Already sealed.”
“I want Maiven told first. If someone used her name, she needs to know.”
“I want Varesh informed after Maiven, in front of witnesses.”
Rhazek’s jaw tightens. “Yes.”
And somewhere in Vonn Akra, alarms begin to sing.