But gods… some wounds don’t bleed out. They just keep slicing.
“I trusted her,” I say finally. The words scrape my throat raw.
He nods once.
“Trust is sacred.”
“Was.”
He narrows his gaze.
“No. Still is. You just have to decide if she’s lost hers forever.”
I grit my teeth.
The image of her face flickers in my head—eyes full of something pained, mouth trembling when she said it. She knew. Sheknewwhat it would do.
But she didn’t speak. Didn’t stop it.
I shake my head, jaw set. “Doesn’t matter.”
Father doesn’t argue. He just says, “Spices taste different when the heart is off balance. Fix the heart, fix the dish.”
I huff out a bitter laugh. “That a proverb?”
He shrugs. “It is now.”
We work in silence after that. Cleaning. Resetting. Tending to coils and burners. The familiar motions of our craft. A part of me aches for the comfort these routines used to bring.
But tonight? Beneath everything?
There’s a hollow space where something warm used to live.
And I feel it. All the way to the bone.
When the last light goes out and the staff filters out into the night, I stand alone in the kitchen. I press my hand flat to the steel of the prep table.
It’s cold.
Like her chair.
Like the space she left behind.
I imagine her walking through the door again, shoulders tight, eyes too soft for someone raised on politics. I imagine her taking the first step toward me.
I imagine turning my back.
It makes something in my chest splinter.
Sixty days.
That’s how long we’ve got before the purge.
Not that anyone calls it that. No, they’ve dressed it up nice—district realignment for human-centric zoning harmony. As if harmony can be forced. As if the scent of our spices and the cadence of our tongues are somehow pollution.
Sixty days.
After that, a hundred alien-run establishments in Novaria Prime—markets, diners, bathhouses, studios—either disappear or drown in fees so convoluted and punitive they might as well be bullets.
