17
The Aftermath
Rynn
Idreamoffire.
Not the controlled heat of my heritage—the elegant flare of scales responding to emotion, the warmth that marks my people as something other. This is wild fire. Consuming fire. The kind that devoured Voros’s fleet when his own targeting systems turned traitor.
In my dream, I’m burning too. But it doesn’t hurt.
Becauseshe’sthere. Pink hair like a beacon in the flames. Hand reaching for mine.
Rynn.
Her voice cuts through the inferno, and I wake gasping into the dim quiet of the fortress medical bay.
Pain hits first—a full-body inventory of everything the bio-flare cost me. Burns along my arms where I pushed past every limit my biology possessed. Plasma scoring across my ribs from a shot I barely remember taking. Exhaustion so deep it feels carved into my bones.
But underneath all of it, threaded through every ache like golden thread through torn fabric:her.
Polly.
I feel her before I see her. The bond pulses between us, warm and steady as a heartbeat. She’s close. Safe.Here.
My eyes adjust to the low light, and I find her.
She’s curled in a chair beside my bed—a chair that’s been dragged close enough that her knees brush the mattress. Her pink hair is a disaster, matted on one side where she’s been sleeping against her arm. There’s a smear of something dark on her cheek. Probably my blood. She hasn’t changed out of her flight suit.
She looks exhausted. Wrung out. Absolutely beautiful.
And she’s watching me with those sharp eyes that see too much.
“Hey there, Lord Chaos.” Her voice is soft, rough with sleep. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
I try to speak. My throat feels like I swallowed plasma fire. All that emerges is a rough sound that might be her name.
Her face softens. “Easy. You’ve been out for six hours. Bio-flare took everything you had.” She reaches for something beside her—a cup of water, which she brings to my lips with careful hands. “Small sips. Don’t make me lecture you about overexerting yourself.”
The water is cool, blessed relief. I drink, and she pulls the cup away before I can take too much.
“More later. Healer’s orders.” A small smile curves her lips. “Well.Myorders. The actual healer tried to separate us so you could rest, but apparently the bond had other ideas. Started spiking your vitals every time I walked away.”
I remember none of this. The last clear memory I have is the Eclipse exploding, Voros’s scream cutting off mid-transmission, and then—
Polly. Catching her as my knees gave out. Holding her in the wreckage of everything we’d survived.
“You stayed,” I manage. My voice sounds like gravel.
“Obviously.” She says it like there was never any other option. Like leaving me was a physical impossibility rather than a choice. “Someone had to make sure you didn’t try to hero yourself into a medical coma.”
She sets the water aside and turns back to me, and I realize she’s holding a med-cloth. Fresh bandages. Healing salve.
“The healer left supplies. I’ve been changing your dressings while you were out.” She meets my eyes, and something flickers there—vulnerability she’s trying to hide behind her usual sass. “Is that... I mean, I can get someone else if you’d rather—”
“No.” The word comes out rougher than I intend. More possessive. I try again, softer: “Stay. Please.”
Her smile returns, smaller but real. “Okay, Lord Demanding. Let me see your shoulder.”
