21. Isolde
ISOLDE
I ’ve never heard silence this loud.
Even inside this bunker of a room—blessedly sealed, polished to corporate perfection, lined in glistening plastisteel and smart-fabric cushions that smell like new credits—everything still echoes.
The noise from earlier—the screaming, the blaster fire, the crumbling glass—replays on a loop in my ears. My jaw clenches against it. My spine's locked. It’s not fear. It’s worse.
It's memory.
"Mom," Pyramus whispers, voice muffled into my side. His fingers clutch the hem of my jacket like it’s the only stable thing in the galaxy. “Are we gonna die?”
“No,” I say, before the word even knows it's leaving my mouth. “Never.”
But the lie sits hot on my tongue. I swallow it anyway.
Security swarms the room like ants with shiny armor and expensive software. Their shoulder insignias flash navy and gold—Private Orbimall Defense Consortium. The corporate kind. Mercenary with a PR degree. The kind that files reports before they pull triggers.
A bald man with a neural implant practically welded into his skull slams a data slate on the table in front of me. It blinks red.
“Your guest list didn’t include pirates,” he snaps. “Or known fugitives. You aware your charity gala just turned into a hostage scenario?”
I shoot him a look sharp enough to cut a throat.
“No one's been taken,” I say. “No one’s been hurt. Because the pirates didn’t fire.”
He blinks at me like I’ve said something in ancient Selenian.
“They breached a station during a high-profile event,” he insists. “That's an act of aggression.”
“And you responded with live rounds into a crowd,” I counter. “That’s not protocol. That’s panic.”
Behind me, three members of my event staff huddle like damp birds, whispering rapid-fire into earpieces, trying to reach PR, comms, planetary representatives—anyone who can spin this before it hits the Holonet like a live grenade.
My stylist sobs quietly in the corner, holding a shredded length of my gown like it’s sacred cloth.
Pyramus pulls on my sleeve again. His voice is smaller this time. “Was that him? ”
I go still.
“I—I thought I saw—” He trails off. I don’t meet his eyes. I can’t.
The image is scorched into my vision: Garokk, up on the catwalk, looming like myth. That impossible stance, those eyes that never blink unless they mean it. He stood with his arms raised like he was begging the universe not to bleed.
It was him.
Gods help me—it was him.
But the room doesn’t need my collapse. Not yet.
“Baby, breathe for me,” I whisper, leaning down. “One in, one out.”
He tries. I feel his ribs expand and contract against my arm. His fingers grip tighter, like if he breathes wrong I’ll vanish.
“Someone tell me why the lockdown hasn’t gone full perimeter,” the bald officer snaps to his comm.
“Because half the doors are slagged from your men shooting first,” I spit, rising so fast my chair screeches across the floor. “And because whoever’s running your system doesn’t know how to read a biometric scan before labeling someone an active hostile.”
“You think this is a joke? ”
“No. I think it’s a circus. And you brought the fire-breathers.”
He steps forward like he’s going to argue. Maybe yell. Maybe demand blood.
But behind me, Pyramus lets out a low whimper. The officer stops. He looks down. For a moment, just a breath, there’s something vaguely human in his eyes.
“We need to move you off-station,” he says. Softer now. “Evacuate to a safe location. That man—Garokk—is dangerous.”
He says the name like it’s poison. Like it’s a curse from another life.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
Another officer speaks up from the corner, her voice dry and exhausted. “Ma’am, if they return, we might not have time to get you out. We don’t even know why they were here.”
I do.
I feel it.
He came for me.
Not the mall. Not the chaos. Me.
And when he saw Pyramus—there was something in his face. Not surprise. Not anger. Something else. Something like recognition dressed up in disbelief. My stomach turns over.
What does he think?
What does he know?
I shake my head, hard. “I need full footage of the promenade. Angle coverage. Sound, if you’ve got it.”
“You’re not authorized?—”
“ I am Isolde Verrix, Chairwoman of the Syndicate Cultural Trust and primary underwriter of this floating monstrosity. Don’t talk to me about authorization.”
The bald man looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. “We’ll have something sent up.”
“Good. Then maybe we can salvage the hour before this becomes a diplomatic nightmare.”
The stylist sniffles louder. I glance over. Her eyes are red, and she’s gripping that ragged piece of gown like it’s a talisman.
“Get up,” I snap. “You’re not bleeding.”
She startles. Stands.
I’m cruel. I know it. But I don’t care. Cruel is what keeps me upright.
“Isolde,” one of the assistants says, “we have to draft a statement.”
“To say what?” I ask. “That the past walked in through a side door and made us remember we’re all playing dress-up on a sinking ship?”
“Something... palatable,” she offers weakly.
I rub my temples. My bones ache. “We’ll draft it when I can think straight.”
From the far corner, Pyramus tugs again. “Why’d he come here?”
He sounds hurt.
Betrayed.
And I don’t have a neat answer.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Another lie.
And I know he knows it.
The walls are too clean, too white. Sterile and humming with recycled air and containment locks. There’s a low thrum in the floor from the backup generators rerouting all power away from the promenade. Somewhere above us, drones are probably scanning every air duct for heat signatures.
I cross to the tinted window. Look down. The lights of the mall flicker back to life, bit by bit. A carousel spins on its side. A fountain’s been scorched black by a stray blaster.
And beyond that—movement.
Not people. Not security.
Ships.
Big ones.
Parked wrong. Facing inward.
Garokk’s crew.
Still docked.
Still not leaving.
And they haven’t fired a shot.
Why?
This wasn’t a raid. It wasn’t a smash-and-grab.
It was a message.
From him.
A pulse in the bloodstream of my carefully rebuilt life.
And now I can’t breathe.
The air in the observation deck is too still.
Too clean. Too sterilized. It feels like the kind of place they used to keep exhibits behind glass in—like maybe once this room held something precious. Endangered. Too important to touch.
Now, it holds something worse.
History.
Me.
And him.
Garokk stands across from me, just inside the glow of the deck’s perimeter lighting.
Not moving. Not speaking. Not even blinking.
His silhouette cuts into the sterile blue wash of the walls like something forged, not born.
No armor. No weapons drawn. But somehow, he’s the most dangerous thing in this room.
I know because my lungs haven’t worked right since he stepped in.
“Security is posted outside,” I say, because saying anything is safer than saying what I want to say. “No surveillance inside, per protocol.”
He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me.
It’s maddening.
I step forward. “You asked for this. You wanted to see me. So say something. ”
Still, nothing.
I clench my fists. My nails bite my palms. I feel the heat rising up my neck, like every minute I spent thinking he was gone has finally caught fire and now it wants blood.
“You’re not going to speak?” I ask. “After two years? After the explosion, the silence, the broadcasts, the funerals?”
He shifts, just barely. His head tilts, like I’m some ancient dialect he’s trying to translate with broken tools.
“I had to identify pieces of your ship,” I hiss. “Charred metal. Burnt circuitry. They handed me a box. A goddamn box. And I told them it couldn’t be you. I told them you were harder to kill than that.”
Nothing.
“But I believed it anyway. I grieved. I rebuilt everything from scratch. For Pyramus. For me.”
Silence.
“Don’t just stand there! ”
I lunge forward, hands trembling. “You let me think you were dead! ”
He flinches—barely. But it’s there. A pulse. A shift. Like the words finally pierce the surface of whatever shield he’s wearing over that heart of his.
When he speaks, it’s low. Rough. Like it got dragged through gravel just to make it out.
“You let me think you were safe. ”
He steps closer now. One measured stride. Not aggressive. Not soft. Just deliberate.
“I didn’t contact you,” he says, voice tight with control, “because the second I did, you became a target. Not just for every syndicate that wants my head, but for every mistake I ever made.”
“I could’ve handled it?—”
“No, you couldn’t,” he snaps. “You had our son. ”
The word drops between us like a live wire. My skin burns with it. Our son.
He knows.
Of course he does. He saw the boy’s face. The truth in his posture. The fire in his defiance.
I don’t correct him.
I don’t have to.
He runs a hand down his face, weary now. “You think I don’t relive it? Every day? Waking up in that wreckage? Crawling through dead metal and knowing if I called you, it would just bring that to your doorstep?”
I shake my head. “So you what—chose to die instead?”
“I chose to stay away. Until I could keep you safe.”
“Newsflash,” I spit, “you didn’t. You walked onto that station, and within two minutes, my kid was almost trampled and half a gala went up in smoke.”
“That wasn’t me,” he growls. “That was your security. ”
I pace, hands in my hair, fury scraping through my veins like glass. “This isn’t about who fired first. This is about you disappearing. About me carrying the weight of a ghost while trying to raise a kid who asks every night why he doesn’t have a dad.”
Garokk looks away.
Good.
Let him feel it.
Let him feel every second I felt—every broken breath, every second-guess, every time I couldn’t sleep because I kept hearing hull breaches in my dreams.
He steps to the viewport, the stars spilling across his features in soft reflection. His voice is almost inaudible now. “I never stopped watching. Just... from a distance.”
“You watched?” My voice cracks. “You watched? ”
“I had to know you were alive.”
“You had to know? I needed you!”
The room goes quiet again.
Except for our breathing.
My heart slams against my ribs. His shoulders rise and fall in slow, mechanical rhythm. Outside the window, ships drift past like distant ghosts, pretending this isn’t happening. Pretending the two of us aren’t standing in the ruins of something we can’t name.
“Why now?” I ask.
Garokk doesn’t turn around.
But he says, “Because he smiled. And I saw me. ”