“You sound like a human trying to mimic a Reaper,” I reply, grinning. “Which is exactly what you are.”
She tosses a throw pillow at my head. I catch it mid-air, still laughing.
“Remind me why we’re doing this?” she mutters.
“Because one day you’ll need to end a blood feud across five sectors by vocalizing a sovereignty wave that doesn’t shatter anyone’s skull.”
“Oh right. Galactic diplomacy through sound warfare. How very traditional.”
I walk toward her slowly, barefoot across the stone floor, each step soft, deliberate. She’s seated on the low dais in ourquarters, legs crossed, hair down—no armor, no commands, just her.
Just Aria.
And gods help me, I’d raze empires just to keep her laughing like that.
“You’re overthinking it,” I murmur, sitting behind her and placing my hands on her ribcage. “It’s not about pitch. It’s about resonance. From the diaphragm. Let the breath drop lower. Below the lungs. Into your gut.”
She shifts, closes her eyes.
My thumbs press gently against her sides.
“Breathe in.”
She does.
“Now out. Slow. Let the tone follow.”
And then she tries again.
The note that spills from her isn’t perfect.
But it’s close.
It hums around the room like smoke curling from sacred flame—low and rich, a vibration rather than a sound. My body recognizes it before my mind does. The ancestral trigger in me stirs, not in violence, but in reverence.
She opens her eyes and stares at me.
“That was…”
“Beautiful,” I whisper.
She smiles slowly. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m a Reaper. We don’t flatter. We name things as they are.”
She shifts in my lap now, her back pressed to my chest, arms slipping around mine. I let her weight settle over me, let her pulse sync with mine.
For a long time, we don’t speak.
The silence isn’t empty. It’s heavy. Full of everything we’ve endured. Everything we’ve carved into this life together. The cost. The sacrifices. The victories no one else saw.
Finally, she whispers, “What were the old war songs really for?”
I run a clawed hand gently through her hair, watching it glint in the firelight.
“Not war,” I say. “Not really. That was the bastardized version. Stripped and weaponized. The original songs were for shielding. Mourning. Calling the tribes home after they’d scattered. They stitched us together when we’d broken too many times.”
She leans back further.
