But still — I meet him eye to eye. My own heart pounding, blood burning under my skin.
“We can’t just be about...us,” I whisper. “This isn’t just our foolish longing. There are people watching. Soldiers, officers, diplomats, clan rats ready to pounce on anything that smells like weakness. If you want to be a leader, then lead. Show them what we are isn’t weakness.”
The corridor hums. A distant alarm — shift change, maybe. The air tastes of metal, fear, insistence.
He closes his eyes briefly. I see the scar across his cheek flex. The bone-plate armor shifts tiny — like muscle preparing.
When he opens them again, his gaze is steady. He inclines his head — once. Slow. Intentional.
“You’re right,” he says. Voice low, fierce. “They’ll get nothing but strength — from me. From you. From what we build. Not just blood and spurs.”
He takes a step back, but I don’t. I stand under flickering lights, in the shallow hiss of ventilation, facing a warlord whose bones are built from death — and whose eyes are burning for something new.
I swallow hard. I taste fear again. Old fear. Human survival-fear. But there’s something else: a spark. A brittle flame trying to burn bright under night-ashes.
“What if I’m not ready?” I whisper. Not a question for him. A doubt. A warning.
He closes the distance again. His nearby presence folds the metal air cold warmth of danger and comfort.
“You will be,” he says simply. “Because I will carry you if you can’t walk. I will shield you if they try to break you. I will fight — with claw, with bone, with everything I am — to protect what matters.”
He reaches up, touches his own cheek — scarred, dented, jagged. “I’m not a pretty knight in some human dream. I’m Reaper. I’m scars and death-moons. But I swear to you: for you, I’ll be what they need. Or what they fear.”
My throat clenches. I blink back something — anger? Sadness? A memory of losing everything, fighting, hiding. A memory of orphanage nights, empty beds, silent halls. I fight to keep the salt in.
“You think that’s enough?” I challenge, voice small but steady. “Your threats, your armor, your spurs… Do you think that’s enough to change minds? To make them see I belong?”
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t shift. Just smiles — a savage, beautiful thing. His red eyes soften a fraction.
“It’s a start,” he says. “Because I don’t promise them you — I promise themme.And when they see what I guard, they’ll learn what it means to honor you.”
I stare at him. I smell his leather, the cold metal at his belt, the faint scent of earth and rain clinging to him from the fields outside. My chest burns.
“Promise doesn’t win wars,” I mutter.
“No,” he rumbles, “but it builds them.”
The silence after that feels heavy. Solid. Real.
I turn away first — not because I’m afraid. Because there’s too much shadow between us still. But as I walk, I feel his eyes on me. I feel the weight of what I asked for — protection, respect, acceptance. I feel the weight of what I gave — challenge, demand, truth.
My boots echo in the corridor. Lights blink overhead. The smell of metal and recycled air washes over me. My heart hammers slow, cautious, alive.
I leave him there — helmet off, cloak draped over his shoulders, as dark as midnight, bones carved by war — but for once, I don’t see the warlord. I see the man trying to be something else.
Across this cold, metal ship. Under harsh lights and harsher politics.
I wonder if I’m ready for what that means.
Because this isn’t about us anymore. It’s about something bigger. His clan. My past. Every compromise, every danger, every whisper waiting to ignite.
I brush my fingers across the seam of the cloak pinned under my arm. The fabric’s rough, real — mine. The smell of smoke and moss still lingers faint, like a memory I can’t scrub out.
I whisper to the corridor walls — to the hum of machines, to the chill of recycled air:
I’m not perfect. I’m afraid. I’m human.
But I’m standing.
