I could feel the shift in her days ago, after the second rescue. After the sunside run, when I carried her blistering body back through hell because she was too stubborn to wait for me. After she saw my back melt and watched it stitch itself back together while she whispered, “Whatareyou?”
That night, she didn’t look away.
She still doesn’t.
Her warmth bleeds through the patch of her jacket pressed to my skin. Her scent’s close now—salt, dust, minerals, and the faint sweetness of something I can never place, something that doesn’t belong to this world. I breathe it in and grind my molars together, forcing control.
Because if I lean into her… if I answer the bond that howls in my blood like a beast clawing at its cage…
I’ll never let her go.
She points at a constellation above us, squinting. “That one there? We called itThe Archivistback home. See how it curves, like a hunched back and the little stars are scrolls?”
I nod, even though I don’t see it. The stars shift too much through Purgonis’ haze. Patterns don’t stick. But she talks like they do, like her memories can anchor the sky and make it still.
“You think your planet names mean anything out here?” I grunt.
She huffs and pokes me in the side. “They meansomethingto me. Besides, you Odex never name anything. You just call stuff ‘the jagged thing’ or ‘the red cave’ or ‘the death pit that swallowed Garok.’ You’re like if dwarves got drunk and took up cartography.”
“I don’t know what a dwarf is.”
“It’s a short angry guy with a beard.”
I glance down at her. “So… me, but small?”
That earns another laugh. Not the belly-deep one from earlier, but still. It scrapes something raw inside me.
She looks up at me and for a moment, her smile falters.
And I know she sees it. The way I’m clenching my jaw. The way I haven’t taken a breath in a full minute. The way I’m barely holding still under her touch.
“I’m not scared of you,” she says softly.
And that—that breaks something in me.
I jerk away. Not violently. Not enough to frighten. But enough that her head slips from my arm and her expression shutters.
I stand. Pace. My claws flex and retract as I walk to the edge of the rock shelf. The night air is thin, sharp. I stare out at the vast black plain below, where the ridge drops into a canyon lit by ventlight and the ghosts of broken magma veins.
“Youshouldbe,” I rasp. “Fear keeps you alive.”
“Maybe,” she says, still seated. “But it also keeps you alone.”
I laugh, low and bitter. “Better alone than broken.”
“Then why haven’t you left?” she fires back.
I freeze.
The wind picks up, dust scraping over my shoulders like teeth. I can smell the night predators out there—sting tail traces, ash-wolf musk. The planet’s usual chorus of misery. But none of that matters compared to the burn in my chest.
She doesn’t stop.
“You could’ve stayed hidden. Youwantedto. But you came back for me. Twice. And now you hang around like some shaggy guardian angel. Don’t act like you don’t care.”
“You don’t understand,” I snarl. “You think I’m here because I care? I’m here because Ican’t not be.”
She stands now, brushing the dust from her suit. Steps toward me until we’re an arm’s length apart. The wind plucks at her curls. Her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes are steady.
