Kaede processed in his own time, at his own pace, and the worst thing I could do was force a conversation he wasn’t ready for. He’d come to me when he’d shaped his thoughts into something that wouldn’t cut us both. That was how he worked. That was how we worked.
Food first. Feelings later. His daughter was demanding tribute, and she had her father’s patience for delays—which was to say, none at all.
The mess hall was functional and sparse—long tables, integrated food stations, the kind of utilitarian design that prioritized efficiency over atmosphere. I didn’t care. I would have eaten off the floor at this point.
I loaded a tray with everything that looked edible and didn’t stop until the surface was full. Protein. Grains. Something fruit-adjacent that smelled sweet enough to make my mouth water. A second cup of the floral tea Zyxel had been pushing on me, because my body had apparently decided it was now a requirement rather than a suggestion.
Kaede sat across from me. Watched me eat the way he watched everything—cataloguing, assessing, calculating variables I probably didn’t want to know about.
I was halfway through my second plate when he spoke.
“We arrive at the CEG Space Station by dinner.”
My fork paused. Not quite a freeze—more a recalibration, the mental equivalent of slamming to a halt on a road I’d been coasting down.
“That soon?”
“That soon.” His voice was even. Controlled. The commander surfacing through the mate, the way it always did when the mission closed in. “You need to be ready. Rested. Dressed properly.” Those neon-green eyes pinned me—steady, unyielding, sharp enough to cut. “No more surprise bondings.”
I set my fork down.
There it was. Not the explosion I’d braced for—Kaede didn’t explode. He delivered. Precise, quiet, lethal with his aim, and that single sentence carried every ounce of what he’d been chewing on since last night.
I could have defended myself. Could have laid out the tactical reasoning—the spirit daggers, the gap between attack and aid, the weapon no one could strip from me. He already knew all of it. Vowels would have explained. Ryzen would have confirmed.
So instead I met his eyes and gave him the only thing he actually needed.
“I should have told you first.”
His jaw tightened. A muscle jumped beneath the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“Yes.” One word. Loaded with everything he wasn’t saying. “You should have.”
I held his gaze. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t excuse. “I’m sorry.”
The mess hall hummed around us—the ambient noise of a warship in transit, crew moving in distant corridors, the ventilation cycling recycled air that tasted faintly metallic. Between us, the golden-neon-green thread burned. Bright. Steady. Bruised at the edges, but not broken.
Never broken.
Kaede exhaled through his nose. Slow. Deliberate. Then he picked up his own cup and drank—a motion that looked casual and wasn’t.
“Eat,” he said. “You need your strength for what’s coming.”
Not forgiveness. Not yet. But the absence of escalation, which from Kaede was practically a peace offering.
I picked up my fork and finished my meal.
By the time I pushed my tray back, the restless edge in my chest had quieted.
Not gone. The worry was still there—the CEG, the Verya, the battle with the Quaww we were walking into with our eyes open. But underneath the worry, something new.
Steadiness.
I reached inward. Counted the threads. Distant but present, each one a star in the constellation I carried inside my chest. And now emerald, burning bright against my mental walls. Larger than the others. Different. A bond forged in desperation and sealed in something that might, given time and survival, become more.
A new thread. A new weapon.
One more piece of my constellation had clicked into place.
