“Yeah. But I never told anyone why.”
She tucks her hair behind her ear, eyes somewhere in the distance. “It wasn’t about the spotlight. Not really. I just wanted to make peoplefeelsomething. Music does that. When it’s good. When it hurts.”
I listen. I don’t interrupt. Her voice isn’t made for quiet, but she’s using it that way now. Like a weapon wrapped in silk.
“I thought the truth would be louder,” she says. “So I traded strings for stories. And then the stories turned to screams.”
She swallows. “And now I can’t tell where the war ends and I begin.”
My fingers curl around the edge of the stone. “I used to build things.”
She turns. “Yeah?”
“Machines. Starcraft. Got pretty good at it. Before conscription. Before it all burned.”
She watches me like she’s learning my face. “What’d you like about it?”
“The silence,” I say. “The way metal obeys when flesh won’t. You follow the plan, you get a result. No chaos. No screaming.”
She breathes out slow. “Gods, that sounds… peaceful.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It was.”
We fall into a silence that isn’t empty. It’s thick with things unsaid. With breath and pulse and all the electricity hanging in the air like a storm that hasn’t hit yet.
Her knee bumps mine. Just a little.
She doesn’t move it.
Neither do I.
Eventually, she whispers, “You think we get to be anything else after this?”
“What?”
“After the war. You think there’s a version of us that gets out and… doesn’t just survive? That builds ships. Or sings blues in smoke-filled bars?”
I shake my head. “I think that version dies here. So this one gets to live.”
She turns to face me fully. The blue light halos her. I can see the line of her collarbone through the torn seam of her jacket. I can see the blood on her knuckles from patching me up. She’s all sharp edges and soft eyes.
Then she leans in.
It’s not sudden. Not violent. Not the kind of kiss you write a war ballad about.
It’s quiet.
It’s a surrender.
Our mouths meet like they’ve been meaning to. Like the silence had already planned this for us. Her fingers dig into my collar. Mine curl around her ribs. We breathe against each other, and it feels like the first real breath in days.
It doesn’t stop there.
We find the only intact bedroll in the shrine. Lay it out beside the fountain, under the crystal glow. We don’t speak. Words would only tangle it. She pulls her jacket off with shaking fingers. I unstrap my chestplate, wincing. She touches my scarred side like it’s something sacred, not ruined.
My skin, red-scaled and ridged with vakutan markings, glints in the light. She drags her fingers down my chest, reverent. “You’re beautiful,” she murmurs, and it shatters something in me.
Her fingers are human. Soft. But her touch is firm, determined. She kisses my chest, my ribs, trailing fire in her wake.
