There’s something warm in my chest. Something reckless.
I don’t name it.
When she finishes, she sets the fork down gently. Doesn’t bolt. Doesn’t tense. Just breathes, deep and steady. Like she’s forgotten to be angry for five whole minutes.
That’s enough for tonight.
Let her keep that silence.
Let her come back wanting more.
CHAPTER 5
KRISTI
Inever skip work.
Not once, not even during the Centuries War Memorial Week when the air around the archives felt thick with smoke that wasn’t really there. I’ve dragged myself in with fever, migraines, one foot wrapped in a pressure brace. The Archives are the one place where the rules don’t shift underneath my boots. Dust and order. Silence and truth. But today, I can’t stand the thought of being surrounded by ghosts and paper.
So I don’t go.
I lie to the system. Tap in sick leave like it doesn’t taste foul on my tongue. My supervisor sends an automated response and that’s it. I’m free.
It terrifies me.
And liberates me.
The city outside the central Human District pulses in ways I’ve never let myself see. Bright, wild things. Air tinged with incense and steam. The Alien Quarter has its own heartbeat, its own scent—metal and spice, charred wood and something floral that doesn’t come from any Terran garden. For the first time, I don’t walk through it like a ghost. I let it touch me.
There’s a Fratvoyan couple on a shaded bench. She’s pressing candied silk between his palms with reverent care, their long fingers brushing. He giggles. Grown adult, just giggling like a fool in love. I look away quickly, like I’ve seen something private.
Farther down, a Pi’Rell monk hovers in that meditative float, his tendrils swaying like they’re caught in a slow current. He’s planted beneath a grafted shade tree that spills light and shadow in equal parts. I pause, watch him breathe without lungs, settle without words. I have nothing to say about it. No judgment. Just… witness.
I don't believe… I'm not naïve. I’ve seen what the wars did. What they do still.
But I’m not sure anymore that they’re all the enemy.
And that—more than anything—shakes me.
I turn onto a side street and suddenly, I’m in front of the restaurant.
Again.
I tell myself it’s coincidence. Proximity. Something small and logical and rooted in reason.
It’s a lie.
I step inside before I can change my mind.
The scent wallops me. Smoke. Sugar. Burnt citrus and seared marrow. It’s home now, in a strange way. My shoulders drop the second the door seals behind me. The clatter of utensils, the shout of kitchen calls, the sizzle of something hot on iron—this is music.
Kenron isn’t at the front today. One of his line cooks—tall and ink-streaked—nods at me but says nothing. I make my way to the corner booth, and no one stops me. No one asks what I’m doing.
Like I belong.
What a damn concept.
I sit. Don’t touch the menu. Don’t need to.
