15. Isolde
ISOLDE
N ine months.
That’s how long it’s been since I stood in the wreckage of a warship, heart bleeding louder than my voice, staring through the void where he used to be.
Now I lie in a sterile medbay with my knees drawn and sweat cooling down my back, and there’s a baby on my chest who’s rewriting the laws of what I thought I could feel.
He’s small. Red-scaled. Golden-eyed.
So golden it hurts.
The nurse, young and too green to know how to hide her reaction, lets out a quiet gasp.
“Is he?—?”
“He’s mine ,” I say before she can finish.
And that’s it.
I don’t elaborate. I don’t owe anyone a damn thing.
The air in the medbay is cold and recycled.
I can still smell the acrid tang of sterilizers, mixed with something softer—new skin, new life, warm and raw and wild.
His fingers curl around the edge of the blanket.
His breath comes in these tiny, rhythmic huffs, like he’s still unsure whether this place is real.
I get it, kid.
Me too.
There are whispers, of course. Rumors with teeth.
Isolde Verrix, once the face of diplomacy and daughter of Novaria’s high table, now the subject of gossip columns and half-censored newsfeeds.
She vanished. She resurfaced. She gave birth in a private medbay with no entourage, no statement, no press.
A child no one expected.
A child that doesn’t look like any human-only child should .
But I say nothing. I don’t grant interviews. I don’t offer explanations. I don’t even name the father.
They can guess.
They will guess.
I keep my son close and my story closer.
I will raise him without fanfare.
No welcome parade.
No press release.
No lavish ceremony with chandeliers and monogrammed bassinets.
Just me. Him. A quiet corner of a clinic where they still respect patient privacy, and a heart that has no more room for spotlight.
But the holonet can’t be silenced forever.
Already, I feel it humming—just beyond the walls, beneath the polite silence of the nurses, between the lines of the med-docs who pretend they don’t know who I am.
They do.
And soon, everyone will.
The story is coming.
But for now, he sleeps in my arms.
And I breathe.
It always happens like this.
Not in the quiet, not when you’re ready. But in the in-between, when your guard’s down and your hands are full of diapers and formula and a child who won’t sleep unless your heartbeat is the rhythm anchoring his own.
That’s when the world claws its way back in.
It’s a clip.
Six seconds.
Grainy. Unstable. Side angle.
Me—hood up, shoulders hunched, cradling Pyramus close to my chest as we step into the pediatric wing at a quiet medcenter tucked away behind the industrial dome. He’s got a little dragon-printed blanket pulled up to his chin, golden eyes wide, blinking at the world like it’s too loud already.
The footage doesn’t show the nurse nodding gently as I passed. Doesn’t show the fever that brought us in. The little cough that made his breath hitch. The panic in my chest when he wouldn’t latch.
It just shows me. And him .
And that’s enough.
By the next morning, I’m on twenty-three subfeeds.
No headlines yet. Just whispers.
“Confirmed sighting?”
“Isolde Verrix—hidden heir?”
“Who’s the child?”
“Hybrid speculation rises.”
Some of the comments are kind. Curious, even.
But most?
They’re monsters dressed in text.
I sit on the floor with Pyramus bundled against me, watching the way the holonet explodes like dry grass catching flame. I don’t tap into the live reels, but Reflector—loyal as always—spools a few samples through his internal projector.
Just headlines.
Just enough to know what’s coming.
He filters the worst.
“Want me to block the IP trails?” he asks, lens spinning, voice low.
“No,” I say, eyes fixed on the screen. “Let them watch.”
He bobs once. Hesitates.
“You should respond.”
I shake my head.
“What would I say?”
Reflector doesn’t answer. And I’m grateful. Because if he had a suggestion, I might’ve broken something.
I don’t answer my door.
Not when the press drone hovers near the window, blinking like it knows me. Not when the clinic sends follow-up messages asking if we’d consider making a statement “for clarity.” Not even when the Verrix crest flashes on my comm—a direct ping from my mother’s private channel.
No.
She lost the right to reach me a long time ago.
I mute the feed, press my cheek against Pyramus’s forehead, and rock him gently. His little body is a furnace, always running warm, like his veins still hum with the fire of a father he’ll never meet.
The stars stretch across the sky in silver bruises. I pull the curtain aside, just a little, just enough to see the night bleed in. Pyramus stirs. Doesn’t wake.
“You’re safe,” I whisper, like maybe saying it enough will make it true.
But I’m not sure I believe it anymore.
The first time he smiles, it’s because of a shadow on the wall.
Not a toy. Not a face.
Just light and movement and something his new little brain connects to wonder.
He opens his mouth, this tiny, toothless shape, and lets out a soft gurgle, like the universe just told him a joke he hasn’t shared yet.
And I laugh. Not the polite kind. Not the stage kind. A real, cracked laugh that pushes tears from the corners of my eyes.
“Oh, stars, baby,” I breathe, pressing kisses into his hair. “You really are everything.”
He flails a little, a claw catching the edge of my collar.
I don’t wince.
I just keep holding him tighter.
By nightfall, the net is in full storm.
Not just speculation now. Debate .
“Is the child Vakutan?”
“Garokk’s ghost?”
“Did Isolde lie to Novaria?”
“Diplomatic repercussions pending.”
“Celebrity. Or war crime?”
I don’t log in. But Reflector reads the metadata. Tracks the escalations. Filters the threats from the noise.
He flashes red once. “Security is breached at the third-level access feed. They’re trying to pinpoint your location.”
“Then change it,” I say.
He does.
Quietly.
Efficiently.
I don’t move from the window.
My knees are stiff. My spine aches. But I don’t care. Because outside, the stars don’t care who I am. What I did. Who I loved.
They just burn .
I press my lips to Pyramus’s temple.
He smells like warm skin and formula and something faintly electric—like a storm caught in stillness.
He doesn’t look like the children from my old world. Too golden. Too sharp.
Too his .
But when he sleeps?
He looks like peace.
He looks like mine .
“I used to think he’d come back,” I whisper, my voice too soft to echo. “That maybe... maybe he’d show up in the night with that stupid grin and that ruined hand, and he’d say something awful and perfect like he always did.”
Pyramus shifts. Doesn’t wake.
I swallow.
“But he won’t. He’s not coming back.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
The first time I let it be real.
The words sit heavy in my chest, but they don’t crush me.
Because next to my heart, this tiny body breathes. Grows.
Because even if the galaxy never gives me closure...
Even if the stars swallowed Garokk whole...
They left me this .
“You’re enough,” I whisper to him.
“You’re everything.”