And I let it come.
The memory of her laugh—rare and low, like she'd forgotten for a second that she hated the world. The way she’d sipped Vakutan nectar like it might kill her but drank anyway, her lips trembling from heat or nerves or maybe the weight of the choice. I remember that sharp-edged smile she gave the first time she liked something I made but didn’t want me to know it. Like admitting the food was good would somehow let me in too deep.
I remember her eyes when she let the little Vakutan girl hand her that napkin. The twitch in her mouth like she wanted to recoil, but instead—instead—she waved. Not big. Not warm. But shewaved. That child grinned like the galaxy cracked open for her.
And gods help me, I thought maybe we were cracking too.
That something inside her was changing. That maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the only one sitting in that shift.
I thought we had a shot.
I thought I saw a flicker of something real.
But real’s got teeth. And I just got bit.
My fists curl under the table. The wood creaks.
She’s one ofthem. That’s the truth slamming through my skull now, again and again. She sat across from me for days, ate my food, looked at me like maybe I wasn’t just some monster wearing a chef’s coat—and then shevoted. Signed her name under a blade and called it policy.
Just like her uncle. Just like the board. Just like all the polished human politicians with synthetic empathy and chrome-plated hearts.
I don't get to scream. Not here. Not anymore.
So I sit in this booth like it’s a damn grave.
And I feel it all.
The heat of her skin when our fingers brushed. The weight of her stare. That night she brought the human brandy, her voice all low shadows and fractured memories. I let her in, piece by slow piece. I cracked open parts I don’t show anyone—not even Father.
And she used that access to pull the trigger.
Gods.
The silence is loud now. Louder than any crowd. The kitchen isn’t humming. No clatter. No low conversation. Just the sigh of vents and the occasional flick from the dying flame coils. I rub my hands over my face, claws scraping lightly against my brow ridges.
I should have known.
No, that’s not fair.
Ididknow. Somewhere under the hope, under the draw and the ache and the hunger, I knew she had lines. Walls. That she’d grown up with poison in her ears, raised by a man who probably read anti-alien propaganda as bedtime stories.
But I believed she couldunlearnit.
And maybe she still could.
But not like this.
Not after she threw me—us—under the gears of politics like we were just another inconvenience.
My father’s voice cuts the silence like a blade.
“You going to sit there all night and mope like a lovesick Fratvoyan?”
I don’t look up. “Maybe.”
He moves with that slow, deliberate weight he always has—measured steps, hands behind his back, eyes ancient and full of thunderclouds.
“She is gone?” he asks.
