18. Dux #2
She lets out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh and almost like pain. “That is possibly the most accurate thing you have ever said.”
“Probably.”
The corner of her mouth shifts for the barest moment before she reins it in.
I lift my hand from the console slowly, giving the control back because forcing her will only make her fight me harder. “Plot it wider.”
She looks at the display.
“Roma.”
“I heard you.”
“Then do it.”
Her fingers hover over the controls, and for a moment I can almost see the two futures in front of her: the fast line that feeds the hunger in her chest, and the safer line that feels like betrayal because grief has no patience for caution.
She chooses the wider path.
The ship’s vector shifts, subtle but real, and the proximity warnings soften from orange to yellow as the projected corridor opens by a few degrees.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Happy?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “But I’m less ready to throw you over my shoulder and fly this thing myself.”
“You do not know how to fly this thing.”
“Details.”
“You would kill us in under thirty seconds.”
“See? I’d still beat the corridor collapse.”
Her mouth moves despite herself, and this time the almost-smile lasts long enough to count. It doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make the danger smaller or the signal less sharp in her blood. But it puts air back into the cockpit.
Then the signal spikes again.
The console emits a clean tone, and Roma’s face transforms with such naked hope that my chest aches.
“Triangulation lock,” she says. “The source is within one sector.”
The words should thrill me.
They don’t.
They make the cold thing inside me settle deeper.
Because I see her now. I see what she will do when the choice comes down to herself or him, to safety or proof, to living or reaching the thing she has built her entire life around.
She will call it duty. She will call it love.
She will make it sound noble enough that no one notices the blade is turned inward.
I notice.
I’m done pretending I don’t.
“Dux,” she says, turning toward me with her eyes wide and bright. “One sector.”
“I heard.”
“We are almost there.”
“Yeah,” I say.
She studies my face, and some of her elation falters. “You are worried.”
“Damn right I am.”
“He may be alive.”
“I hope he is.”
Her brow tightens. “You say that like it is secondary.”
I move closer, lowering my voice so the ship and the core and the ghosts outside don’t get any part of this that belongs to us.
“It is.”
The color drains slightly from her face.
I keep going before she can put armor over the hurt. “Your father matters. I know he does. I’m here because he matters to you. But I’m not following that signal anymore, Roma.”
“What are you following?”
“You.”
She stares at me, lips parted, one hand still resting on the console like she needs the ship to keep her upright.
“That is irrational,” she whispers.
“Yeah,” I say. “Probably.”
“You should not say things like that while I am trying to think.”
“I know.”
“You are making this more difficult.”
“Good.”
Her eyes sharpen, but the anger doesn’t fully arrive. “Good?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Because if it gets harder for you to throw yourself away, I’ll count that as my first useful contribution today.”
She looks away first, but it isn’t dismissal. Her hand moves over the controls with less frenzy now, still fast, still brilliant, still chasing the signal with everything she has, but the path stays wider. The margins stay alive.
I watch the display, then her, then the warped graveyard beyond the viewport.
The mission has changed on me without asking.
Fine.
Most things do.
I came here ready to die for something that mattered.
Now I stand beside a woman who thinks survival is negotiable if love demands enough of her, and I realize dying would be the lazy part.
Living through this, keeping her breathing through the choices she thinks she has to make, dragging her back from the edge even if she hates me for it—that is the harder work.
My side throbs where the drone cut me, and the taste of blood sits faintly at the back of my throat.
I ignore it.
Roma angles us deeper into the core, toward the brightening signal and whatever waits around it.
I brace myself beside her.
“Wider on the next turn,” I say.
She glances at me from beneath the fall of red hair that has slipped loose near her cheek. “I know.”
“Just making sure.”
“I said I know.”
Her voice holds irritation, but her course adjustment already matches what I would have told her.
I look forward, feeling the ship tremble around us.
“Good girl,” I murmur.
Her head snaps toward me. “Excuse me?”
I grin despite everything. “Keeping you grounded.”
“I will vent you.”
“Wider path first.”
She mutters something vicious under her breath and turns back to the controls.
The signal is ahead of us, strong enough now to feel like a promise.
I don’t trust promises.
I trust her hands, her mind, her stubborn little heart, and the fact that I’m standing close enough to catch her if the promise breaks.