A resistor.
A goddamn fighter.
When I climb back to my bunk—an old maintenance shelf with a blanket stapled to the wall—I stare out the one sliver of window that still works. It’s cracked and dirty, but through it I can see the city.
Mirrored towers. Gleaming spires. Clean light that never touches the tether.
I used to eat in those towers. Used to toast crystal flutes with council elites who made deals with genocide behind closed doors. I used to think I was doing good.
Now I know better.
Now I carry the weight of my mistakes on my back like armor.
And I won’t stop until every lie is brought screaming into the daylight.
Morning comes early for resistance fighters, it turns out. I’m up with the sun and already working up a sweat before breakfast. It’s impossible not to hear things, with such tight confines.
It starts like a whisper. Small, sweet. The kind of thing that would’ve made me smile a lifetime ago.
I’m helping distribute heating pads from a busted cargo locker. The coils are barely warm, but here, that counts. A dozen hands reach out—scaled, feathered, furred. And one small palm, grayish-lavender, attached to a Drevia boy with moon-wide eyes and the kind of expression that cuts right through me.
“Are you Kenron’s mate?” he asks, voice quiet but clear.
My hands freeze.
I look down at him. He can’t be more than six, maybe seven. His spines haven’t come in yet. His nose wrinkles when he speaks, like he’s worried he might’ve done something wrong.
I should say something light. Laugh it off. Tell him it’s complicated.
But the words don’t come.
Because the truth’s heavier than I expected.
“I don’t know,” I say, honestly.
He tilts his head. “But you sleep with his smell on your coat.”
That stops my heart for half a beat.
He’s not wrong.
I’ve been sleeping with his jacket tucked under my makeshift pillow since I left the safehouse. I told myself it was for comfort, for familiarity, for warmth.
But it’s him.
And I miss him.
I crouch to the boy’s level, smile just enough not to lie.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Pael,” he says.
“Well, Pael,” I murmur, “I think I’d like to be.”
He beams. Then darts off with his heating pad like the world’s just made sense again.
I stay kneeling there a second longer, the ache in my chest not entirely unpleasant.
