Chapter 28 Voltar
VOLTAR
Three years later, Novaria is quiet.
I don’t trust that sentence. Not emotionally. Not tactically. Quiet is a pause, not a state. Quiet is the inhale before something decides to scream.
But for now? For now it’s real enough.
Morning light spills through the windows of our apartment, warm and pale, catching on polished metal accents and the faint glitter embedded in the grout because someone—someone very small and very destructive—thought it would be festive to “improve” the bathroom last week.
I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, one arm flung out, the other pinned.
Pinned by six feet of toddler.
Roxy snores against my chest, red-scaled cheek mashed into my collarbone, one clawed hand fisted in my shirt like she’s worried I might escape.
She weighs more than most grown humans and twice as much when she’s asleep.
Her tail twitches occasionally, knocking against my thigh with a dull thump thump, and every time she exhales there’s a faint puff of heat that smells like warm copper and baby shampoo.
Under the bed, the minigun hums softly in standby mode.
Sable hates that it hums.
I’ve tried to explain that it’s a comfort hum. That it’s practically white noise. She has responded by throwing a pillow at my head and telling me if the toddler figures out how to turn it on, I’m the one explaining it to Alliance Child Services.
Fair.
Roxy shifts, claws scraping lightly over my chestplate scars, and mumbles something in her sleep.
“Boom,” she whispers.
Proud parent moment.
The door slides open with a soft hiss and Sable steps in, already dressed, hair pulled back in that sharp, elegant way that still does unfair things to my brain. She smells like citrus cleanser and expensive product and home.
She takes one look at the situation and sighs.
“You let her sleep on you again,” she says.
“She tackled me,” I reply quietly. “I lost initiative.”
“She is three.”
“She is a predator.”
Roxy snorts and curls tighter, tail wrapping around my leg like a living restraint.
Sable crosses her arms. “You were supposed to move her back to her bed.”
“I was going to,” I say. “But then she said ‘boom’ and I felt emotionally validated.”
Sable pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’re impossible.”
“You married this,” I remind her.
She pauses. Then smiles despite herself. “I married a technically retired war criminal with a god complex and a soft spot for glitter.”
Roxy’s eyes snap open.
“GLITTER?” she roars.
The windows rattle.
I wince. “Inside voice, terror nugget.”
She grins—too many sharp little teeth, all delight—and scrambles upright on my chest, scales catching the light in deep reds and burnished golds. She’s wearing a tutu. I don’t know when she put it on. I don’t question these things anymore.
“Daddy,” she declares, pointing one clawed finger at the ceiling. “I dreamt BIG BOOM.”
Sable sighs. “Please tell me it was metaphorical.”
“No,” Roxy says solemnly. “Pretty.”
Of course it was.
Sable looks at me. “She gets that from you.”
I sit up carefully, bracing Roxy with one arm so she doesn’t headbutt me off the bed. “She also likes glitter and loud music. That part’s on you.”
“Excuse you,” Sable says. “She has refined taste.”
Roxy cackles and launches herself off the bed, landing with a bone-shaking thud that makes the floor complain. She immediately starts dragging a box of craft supplies toward the window.
“Oh no,” Sable says. “No no no. We talked about crafting outside.”
Roxy looks up, eyes wide and innocent. “Outside boom?”
“No boom,” Sable says firmly.
I clear my throat. “Define boom.”
Both of them glare at me.
Breakfast is chaos.
Roxy insists on helping. Helping means cracking eggs with her claws and then eating the shells because “crunch.” Sable negotiates like a diplomat trying to prevent an interstellar incident.
I flip protein slabs and keep one eye on the minigun readout just in case my daughter decides today is the day she discovers advanced weaponry.
She doesn’t.
Small miracles.
Later, Sable leaves for the salon.
Salons, technically.
Plural.
She owns three now. Same name, same aesthetic—clean lines, bold colors, unapologetic glamour. Franchise agreements. Training programs. She runs them like a general runs a campaign, minus the screaming and with significantly better hair.
Before she goes, she kisses my cheek, then Roxy’s forehead, then pauses.
“You good today?” she asks me quietly.
I nod. “Yeah. I’ve got the menace.”
Roxy flexes. “MENACE.”
Sable smiles, soft and proud. “I’ll be late. Tugun’s stopping by.”
I groan. “Again?”
“He’s bringing fabric samples,” she says.
“Of course he is.”
She squeezes my shoulder and leaves, heels clicking down the hall like punctuation.
Tugun arrives exactly on time.
He always does now. It’s unsettling.
He looks… spectacular.
Tailored coat in soft obsidian, asymmetrical cut, subtle shimmer woven through the lining. Hair pulled back, expression serene. NovaVogue followed him for six months after the feature ran. From Blood to Runway, they called it.
Roxy adores him.
“UNCLE TUGUN!” she bellows, barreling into him at full speed.
He braces, catches her mid-charge with effortless grace, and spins her once, laughing. “Hello, little star.”
She grabs his lapels. “You shiny.”
“Always,” he agrees.
I lean against the counter, arms crossed. “You’re spoiling her.”
“Yes,” Tugun says calmly. “That is the point of godparenthood.”
He sets Roxy down and hands her a small bag.
Sable will kill him.
Roxy opens it.
Glitter explodes.
Everywhere.
Gold. Red. Iridescent flecks that catch the light and immediately adhere to every surface like a hostile takeover.
I stare at Tugun.
He spreads his hands. “Biodegradable.”
Roxy squeals and starts tossing it in the air like it’s holy confetti.
“I am going to vacuum this until I die,” I mutter.
Tugun smiles beatifically. “I’ll send you a new vacuum.”
“Make it two.”
We sit. We talk. He shows me spreads from NovaVogue. I pretend not to be impressed. I am deeply impressed.
Roxy falls asleep halfway through, curled on his lap, glitter-dusted and drooling.
He looks down at her with something dangerously close to reverence.
“She’s magnificent,” he says softly.
“She is,” I agree.
Outside, Novaria hums.
Quiet—for now.
I watch the city through the window, my daughter breathing warm and steady, the ghost of war finally distant enough to feel like memory instead of threat.
I am retired.
Technically.
The minigun stays under the bed.
Just in case.
Some habits don’t break.
Some things you protect forever.
Even if it means you have to suffer certain indignities…like what transpires the next day.
I sit on a kitchen stool while my life makes very questionable choices around me.
Sable stands behind me, scissors in hand, jaw set in that familiar way that means she’s concentrating and absolutely does not want commentary. She’s draped a towel over my shoulders—one of the good ones, apparently, because she slapped my hand away when I tried to adjust it.
“Don’t move,” she says.
“I’m not moving,” I say.
“You breathed.”
“I require that.”
She snips anyway.
Little pieces of my hair fall onto the tile, dark against the pale floor.
The kitchen smells like citrus cleaner and coffee and whatever synthetic starch Roxy tracked in from her last ‘experiment.’ The window’s cracked open, letting in the city’s hum—hover traffic, distant voices, the low thrum of a place that learned how to live again without screaming.
Behind us, something crackles.
I glance sideways.
Roxy stands on a chair she absolutely was not allowed to climb, goggles pushed too far down her snout, tail swaying with malicious joy. She’s holding a bag of plasma marshmallows—pink, semi-translucent, faintly glowing.
The cat is on the counter.
The cat should not be on the counter.
The cat looks resigned.
“Roxy,” Sable says without looking up, “what are you doing?”
“Science,” Roxy replies proudly, winding up her arm.
“No throwing—”
Too late.
The marshmallow arcs through the air in a beautiful, terrible parabola and splats against the backsplash, erupting in a harmless but spectacular flash of blue sparks. The cat yowls and leaps off the counter, vanishing down the hall like it’s late for its own funeral.
I wince. “Direct hit.”
Roxy cheers. “AGAIN!”
“Absolutely not,” Sable says flatly. She pauses, scissors hovering dangerously close to my ear. “Voltar. Why does she have plasma marshmallows.”
I consider my answer carefully. “In my defense—”
“Voltar.”
“—Tugun said they were ‘educational.’”
She exhales slowly through her nose. “I am going to invoice him.”
Roxy throws another marshmallow.
This one sticks to the fridge and hums ominously.
Sable snips a little harder than necessary.
“I miss danger,” I say.
She freezes.
Not the scissors. Her.
Then she resumes cutting like I didn’t just say something stupidly honest.
“I miss silence,” she replies.
I smile.
“That checks out,” I say. “You live with a six-foot toddler who thinks explosions are punctuation.”
Behind us: “BOOM!”
The fridge sparks again.
Sable clears her throat. “Roxy. Last warning.”
Roxy looks at us, eyes wide, marshmallow poised. “Daddy said boom is punctuation.”
I lift a finger. “Context matters.”
She throws it anyway.
This one bounces off the fridge, skitters across the counter, and fizzles out against the sink with a sad little pop.
Sable lowers the scissors and turns her head slightly. “You want to explain that to her?”
“I absolutely do not,” I say.
She smirks and goes back to work.
We fall into an easy rhythm after that. Snip. Pause. Adjust. Roxy hums to herself, a low, rumbling tune that vibrates the cabinets. I recognize it—an old Vakutan march she picked up from one of my playlists before Sable banned them from indoor use.
“You’re cutting it shorter on the left,” I note.
She hums. “Your head is asymmetrical.”
“That feels personal.”
“It’s factual.”
I laugh softly. It feels good. It always does, laughing with her. Like muscle memory I don’t have to think about anymore.
“You really miss it?” she asks after a moment.
“Danger?” I shrug. “Sometimes. Not the dying part. Just… the clarity. Everything mattered. Everything was loud.”
She snips again. “Everything still matters.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But now it’s quieter.”
Roxy knocks over a chair.
Sable doesn’t even flinch.
“Relative,” she says.
I catch her eye in the reflection of the microwave door. She looks older. Not in a way that scares me. In a way that feels earned. Lines at the corners of her mouth from smiling. Strength in her posture that wasn’t always there.
“You miss it?” I ask.
She considers. “I miss knowing where the threat is.”
“That tracks.”
She sets the scissors down for a second and rests her hands on my shoulders. Warm. Steady.
“I don’t miss being afraid all the time,” she adds.
I reach up and cover her hand with mine. “Neither do I.”
Behind us, Roxy climbs down from the chair and toddles over, tail swishing dangerously close to the outlet she absolutely should not be near.
“Daddy,” she says. “Cat broken.”
“He’s hiding,” I correct. “Strategic retreat.”
She nods like that makes perfect sense.
Sable finishes the last snip and steps back, assessing her work with a critical eye.
“Don’t say it,” I warn.
She tilts her head. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were going to say something.”
“I was going to say you’re still handsome.”
I blink. “Oh.”
She smiles. “Idiot.”
I stand, turning carefully so I don’t knock Roxy over, and pull Sable into me. Hair clippings crunch under my boots. The kitchen is a disaster. The fridge hums with residual energy. The cat hisses from somewhere unseen.
Perfect.
I kiss her.
It’s not urgent. It’s not desperate. It’s familiar and warm and full of years we earned the hard way. She kisses me back like she always does—like she’s home.
Roxy makes a loud gagging noise. “EW.”
We break apart, laughing.
“You did this,” Sable tells her.
Roxy grins, sharp little teeth gleaming. “Family.”
I scoop Roxy up before she can throw anything else and sling her onto my shoulder. She squeals with delight and immediately starts tugging my hair.
“Hey,” I say. “Fresh cut.”
“BOOM CUT,” she declares.
Sable shakes her head, smiling soft and tired and real. “We are still idiots.”
“Absolutely,” I agree. “But we’re older.”
“And wiser,” she adds.
Roxy licks my ear.
“And somehow still idiots together,” I finish.
Sable steps closer, resting her forehead against my chest. The world outside hums. Inside, the chaos settles into something livable.
Love looks like this.
Messy.
Chaotic.
Resilient.
And absolutely worth protecting.