The smell of metal lingers on the cloak — faint, smoky, the tang of quarry-dust and bone-grind. I imagine it wrapping around her — warmth, softness, protection. Not armor. Not dominance. Shelter.
The next day, I pass the bunk while Slates run their rounds. I don’t enter. I just glance at the bed. The cloak is gone. Folded. Neat. I can’t see her — not from the corridor — but I smell something new on the air: faint vanilla and laundry-soap, not the stale recycling of shipboards. A soft sign she used it, maybe pressed it close, maybe just recognized that someone thought of her.
I taste bitter pride on my tongue. Quiet. Sharp.
Someone once told me: for a Reaper, hope is the most dangerous emotion.
Maybe. But if hope is a blade, this one is sharpened on memories — not hate.
I return to the greenhouses that night. The Solari fires flicker inside the glass domes. Seeds sprout in neatly organized rows. The air is humid, smells of moss and leaf-rot and life. I gather a handful of wild-flower pods — soft purple blossoms, delicate.
I carry them in my gauntlet—bone spurs clinking softly.
I leave them in the small locker outside her quarters, with a note crudely scrawled on scrap plastisteel: “For cold nights. — V.”
I don’t wait to see if she takes them. I walk away.
But I feel the absence of steel over my spine. The ache of waiting.
And that ache is new.
Some time later, I sit alone on the steps of the compound, overlooking the faint glow of Storder’s forests. Wind whispers over the ridges. The smell of pine and rain, of earth and distant thunder.
The scar along my cheek itches — a reminder of battles fought, beasts slain, moons conquered. The bone-spurs on my arms clink quietly as I flex my fingers.
I lift one hand, smear soil across the scars — old dried sweat and dust, nothing more. I close my eyes and murmur to the darkness:
She is mine.
But this time, it’s not a claim.
It’s a promise.
To tear down the walls I built — brick by brutal bone-forged brick — and build something new. Fragile. Soft. Alive.
I don’t know if she’ll step across that threshold. I don’t know if she’ll stay after the war finishes, after the next raid, after the next cold morning when the ghosts of screams still echo in my head.
But for once — I’m not sure I care.
Because for the first time in a long time, I want more than conquest.
I want belonging.
I want her.
And I’m learning.
I’m learning that the greatest siege I’ll ever wage is on my own heart.
But I’m ready.
CHAPTER 11
FREYA
Ifind the cloak folded at the edge of my bunk just after shift-change. It’s not thrown, not tossed — it’s placed, neat and perfect as though someone measured shadows to get the sizing right. My heart hits my ribs like a drum.
The cloth is thick, but not bulky. Insulated, soft-lined. Not that scratchy, standard-issue IHC fabric. I pull it out, hold it up in the cramped bunk lighting. The material catches the pale florescent glow like a promise — dark charcoal with a faint pattern, subtle reinforcement stitching at the seams. The stitches run clean, straight. The pockets—two inner, one outer—lined carefully. There’s room for my compad, my gloves, maybe a small flask.
