Naull doesn’t move. Not right away. He just sits there, eyes closed, like he’s savoring something. Or grieving it.
“Naull,” I say, voice quiet. “We’re down.”
His eyes open.
They meet mine, and for once, there’s no smirk. No joke waiting in his throat.
“Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse. “We are.”
We climb down the ladder in silence.
The tech crews scramble around us, barking orders, checking damage. Whiplash’s right whip-arm is warped at the tip from contact with the kaiju’s radiation core. One of the stabilizers is running red-hot. There’s scorched plating across the torso.
But it’s alive. And so are we.
“Goddamn miracle,” I hear someone mutter.
I don’t correct them.
It wasn’t a miracle.
It was theMeld.
Naull and I walk side by side, not talking. I’m hyper-aware of him now—not just his size or the sound of his boots or the heat radiating off his scales—but thefeelof him in the room.
It’s like my mind hasn’t closed the door.
The link’s severed, but theimpressionremains.
A warm echo in the back of my head. The shape of a soul I shouldn’t be able to recognize, but do.
“Aria.”
He says my name like it’s a question.
I stop.
He does too.
We’re in one of the supply alcoves, barely big enough for the two of us to stand without touching.
He shifts his weight, eyes scanning me like he’s trying to read something etched just beneath my skin.
“I didn’t mean for you to see all that,” he says.
“You think it makes you weak,” I say finally.
He scoffs, but it’s hollow. “Don’t you?”
I shake my head. “No. I think it makes you real.”
That surprises him. He doesn’t say anything, just studies me like he’s seeing something new.
And I get it. Igethow hard it is to be seen. To be known. To stand in front of someone with all your wiring exposed and not flinch.
So I do something stupid.
Or maybe brave.
