23. Isolde
ISOLDE
T he Holonet won’t shut up.
It’s in the walls. The mirrors. The glow panels above the sink. Flickering headlines like graffiti scrawled across every polished surface in this too-bright hotel suite: CRIMSON RAIDER RETURNS. PIRATE KING PAROLED. LOVE, LIES, AND LASERS.
Somewhere, a gossip feed's looping a clip of me mid-blast panic, mouth parted, gown scorched, eyes wild.
The caption reads: ISOLDE’S SECOND CHANCE?
I mute it with a flick of my wrist.
The silence that follows feels just as loud.
I lean against the glass partition between me and the view of the city-ring below. Lights glitter across the Orbimall like someone spilled a box of baubles and let them stay where they fell. Pretty. Distracting. Empty.
There’s a bowl of untouched fruit on the tray beside me. Everything in this room smells too fresh. Citrus, linen, sterilizer. It clashes with the taste in my mouth—bitter, sour, old.
Pyramus is curled up on the sofa, his face pressed into the crook of his arm, pretending to read one of his holobooks. The backlight of the tablet flickers across his cheek like a pulse. He’s not really reading. I know that posture. I invented it.
“You want to talk?” I ask, voice soft.
He doesn’t look up. “No.”
“You sure?”
He shifts. Shrugs. “He looked like me.”
The words hit like a silent bomb. No drama. Just truth dropped into the center of the room like a weight.
I turn away from the window.
“He did,” I admit. “I noticed too.”
“Is he my dad?”
It’s not even a question. Not really. Just a confirmation of something his instincts already told him.
I sit slowly on the edge of the couch.
“Yes.”
He doesn't react. No gasp. No tears. Just blinks. Then turns the tablet off.
“I knew it.”
“How?”
He looks at me with those storm-colored eyes I used to convince myself came from some ancestor I’d never met. But the truth was always sitting there—just waiting to be named.
“He walks like me,” he says. “And his voice… felt familiar. Like music I forgot.”
I swallow hard.
Pyramus shifts closer and rests his head on my arm. “Did he leave because of me?”
“No,” I say instantly. “He didn’t even know.”
“Would he have stayed if he did?”
And that... that’s the question that tears something open in my chest.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
He’s quiet for a while. Then, “Do I get to see him?”
The words are soft. Not demanding. Not hopeful. Just... curious.
“Maybe,” I say. “But only when you want to. Not before. You’re allowed to take your time.”
He nods.
And I can see the swirl of emotion under that calm surface. Confusion. Fury. Fascination. He doesn’t know what to do with any of it—and neither do I.
I run my hand through his hair, slow and steady. Like I used to when he was too young to form words but still dreamed of fire.
He leans into it.
But the moment is fragile.
“I saw the way he looked at you,” he says suddenly.
I freeze.
“What do you mean?”
“Like he remembered everything all at once. But didn’t know if he was allowed to feel it.”
I can’t breathe for a second.
Because he’s right.
Garokk didn’t speak when he saw me.
But he didn’t have to.
The look in his eyes was a war between wanting to fall to his knees and wanting to vanish.
“He used to love you, right?” Pyramus asks.
I close my eyes.
“Yeah,” I say. “He did.”
“Do you still love him?”
I don’t answer.
Because I’m not sure which part of me would speak first—the woman who mourned him, or the one who kept his child hidden to protect what little she had left.
The Holonet flashes another headline: PIRATE OR PROTECTOR? GAROKK'S GILDED PAROLE.
I mute it again.
The system tries to restart it three times before finally going still.
I turn to my son. “Come here.”
He lets me pull him close, tucking his small frame into the curve of my body like he used to when the world felt too loud.
I hold him.
Tighter than usual.
Because I don’t know what tomorrow brings.
But tonight, I have him.
The station’s too quiet at night.
Not real night, not the kind with stars and dew and wind sneaking through open windows. This is orbital night. Engineered dusk. Lights dimmed by protocol, the illusion of time passing marked by muted hallway glows and holoclocks ticking out numbers I don’t believe in.
Pyramus fell asleep with his hand curled around the sleeve of my robe, like he thought I might vanish again.
I waited until his breathing evened out, then slipped free.
Now I stand in front of the secured VIP suite—door unguarded, but not unwatched. I know there are sensors trained on me. I know this door logs every visitor. I know this is a bad idea.
But I press the chime anyway.
A second.
Two.
Then, the door hisses open.
I step inside without invitation.
The room’s dim, lit only by the window stretched across one curved wall. Garokk stands in front of it, shirtless, his back turned to me. Muscles taut, posture still as stone. The view behind him is a sea of pinpricked lights, constellations fractured by the slow spin of the ring.
His back is a battlefield.
Jagged lines.
Healed-over burns.
Scars like claw marks and deep shrapnel grooves. Not artful. Not survivable in the usual way. This is someone who didn’t just crawl from wreckage—he bargained with death and paid in flesh.
I should say something.
I don’t.
He doesn’t turn.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, voice low.
“Wasn’t trying.”
His reflection in the window flickers faintly when I move closer, the light catching the curve of my hip, the bare of my collarbone. I’m not here for seduction.
But the air between us doesn’t know that.
I stop a few feet from him. Arms folded. To keep them from reaching. Or shaking.
“Pyramus asked if he could see you,” I say.
That gets him.
His spine shifts. Just a flicker of breath too sharp.
“What’d you tell him?” he asks.
“That it’s his choice. That you’re not going anywhere.”
He nods once. Still doesn’t turn.
“I didn’t come here to talk about him,” I say.
“Then why’d you come?”
I stare at the back of his neck.
“Because I need to understand.”
He finally turns.
Gods.
His face is the same, but not.
Lines deeper.
Eyes heavier.
But still that same fire under the ash. Still that same pull.
He doesn’t speak.
So I do.
“You vanished. Blew up, apparently. Sent me nothing. No beacon. No code. Just… left me holding grief and a child I didn’t know how to raise.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
He moves to the sideboard, pours himself a drink from a decanter that probably costs more than most refugee ships.
He doesn’t offer me one.
Fine.
He drinks, then leans on the table, arms braced. “I didn’t send anything because if I had, they’d have traced it back to you.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. Rivals. Debt collectors. Enemies I didn’t know I had.”
I walk toward him, slow.
“You didn’t trust me to handle it?”
“I trusted me not to make it worse.”
That throws me.
Because there’s no venom in it. Just self-loathing worn smooth by time.
He sets the glass down. “I woke up in a wrecked freighter with half a lung and no way out. By the time I clawed through the decks, I was halfway across a dead zone, no signal, no allies.”
“You could’ve found a way?—”
“I did. But by the time I did, I watched your face light up the Holonet, cutting ribbons, building homes, carrying our son. And I thought, ‘If I go back, I bring the worst of me with me.’ So I stayed away.”
He’s shaking.
Slight. But real.
And godsdammit, I hate him for making it make sense.
Because now I can’t hate him cleanly.
“You should’ve let me decide,” I say.
“I know.”
Silence.
It stretches so wide I feel like I might fall through it.
He looks at me, eyes rimmed in something raw.
“Do you want me to leave?”
I don’t answer right away.
Because I don’t know.
Because I hate that I don’t know.
He takes a step toward me.
Not fast.
Just close enough that I can feel the heat of him. The scent—smoke, leather, metal. The same scent I once pulled into my lungs like salvation.
His hand rises.
He doesn’t touch me.
Just hovers.
Waiting.
Like he still remembers how I flinch when I’m close to falling.
I step back.
Just once.
And the spark that lit between us cracks, quiet and sad.
I see him take it.
Like a bullet.
I clear my throat. “Pyramus gets to choose. But I… I need time.”
He nods.
Doesn’t argue.
That hurts more than if he’d begged.
I walk to the door.
Hand on the panel.
Then I pause, glancing back over my shoulder.
He’s still there.
Still silent.
Still him.
“I hated you,” I whisper.
“I still hate me,” he replies.
The door hisses open.
And I walk out.