She moves back to her seat, and the distance feels like it hurts.
I watch her go. Watch the way she settles back into her work, fingers flitting across keys. Too fast to track.
We’re opposites in every way that matters.
And I can’t imagine not having her in my life.
In a world that feels alien, she’s the only connection who feels like… home.
I sit back in my seat and shut my eyes, letting the odd atmosphere of the aircraft wash over me. It feels like a lifetime before the voice of the pilot has me snapping back to awareness. We’re about to land. I stare out of the small window.
The descent over the city makes my breath catch.
Seattle, they called it. Where Craven headquarters are based. Aurora nearby.
Buildings scrape the sky. Glass and steel reach heights that would have been impossible in my time. Lights everywhere—even in daylight, they glow. Streets grid the landscape in perfectgeometry. The water beyond—someone says Puget Sound—is dotted with vessels nothing like the ships I remember.
Four hundred years compressed into a single view.
I was gone. Sleeping. While the world transformed into this.
The wrongness intensifies. Not fear. Something deeper. The bone-deep knowledge that I don’t belong here. That I’m a relic animated by accident.
We land at a private airfield. More security than I’ve seen since the facility—Aurora personnel everywhere. Some in tactical gear. Others in clothing so ordinary they’d disappear in a crowd.
A tall, silver-haired man approaches as we disembark. Rough-hewn features and a milky eye that only adds to the raw strength of a face that I recognize from recent video calls. Viktor Parlance. His expression is carefully neutral, but I see the calculation. He’s weighing me. Deciding how to proceed with a resurrected king who just returned from the dead.
“My lord Kael.” He offers his hand. Modern gesture. I recognize it from observation. “Welcome to Seattle.”
I take it. Firm grip. Brief. “Thank you.”
“We have quarters prepared at headquarters. Facilities for Vex. Briefing rooms—”
“I go where she goes.” I don’t look at Mara. Don’t need to. “There is a healing bond that requires proximity.”
He nods. “Understood. Caleb explained. We’ve arranged adjoining rooms.”
Adjoining. Close but separate.
The bond doesn’t care about walls. We’ve learned that in the past twenty-four hours.
The vehicles waiting are sleek. Black. Nothing like carriages or horses. We’re divided among them—Mara and I share one with Viktor and two guards whose names I don’t catch.
The drive into the city is surreal.
Towers of glass everywhere. Streets thick with vehicles, all moving in coordinated chaos. Lights that change color at intersections—red, yellow, green. A system I grasp immediately. Signs in English and other languages. People on sidewalks, most staring at devices in their hands.
No one looks up. No one notices the sky.
Mara catches me staring. “Culture shock?”
“Is that what this is called?”
“That’s what it’s called. You’ll get used to it.”
Will I?
But I nod anyway. Arguing seems pointless.
