We were halfway down the corridor toward Ryzen’s quarters when I stopped short.
“I’m going to check on him,” I said, my voice clipped. “You’re not needed for this. You’re dismissed.”
Eshe halted immediately, but tension snapped through her frame. “Your Majesty—Ryzen is Verya. He’s unstable. If he loses control—”
I turned on her.
“Hold your tongue.”
The words landed sharp enough to make her blink. I stepped closer, meeting her gaze head-on. “Q is Quaww. He’s co-piloting this ship, and he’s proven himself loyal to us. Ryzen is no different.” My voice didn’t rise—but it hardened. “If you’re going to be captain of my Royal Guard, you will leave your prejudice at the nearest airlock.”
Eshe stiffened then lowered her head, exposing her neck. “My apology, Beacon. I spoke out of concern. His condition is… volatile.”
“I know,” I said. “And I trust him anyway. Right now, he needs someone who won’t look at him like a threat.” I tapped two fingers against my temple. “My mates will know if something happens to me. I’m not unprotected.”
She hesitated, clearly torn, then straightened. “Understood.”
“You’re dismissed until we land,” I added firmly.
Eshe bowed—sharp and precise—and stepped back. “As you command.”
Ryzen’s quarterswere on the far end of the residential wing—as far from the rest of the passengers as the ShadowClaw’s layout allowed. Kaede’s doing, probably.
I stopped outside the door.
Through the metal door between us, his emotions crashed against my shields in waves—projected and overwhelming. Grief. Rage. Panic. Loss. The terrible, echoing silence where something vital had been ripped away.
I knew that silence.
I’d lived in it for years—alone in white rooms, strapped to tables, surrounded by beings who saw me as a failed experiment instead of a person. The absence of connection. The certainty that no one was coming.
That no one cared.
My hand found the door panel before I could talk myself out of it. The lock disengaged with a soft click.
He hadn’t bothered to secure it. That told me everything I needed to know about his current state.
The lights were dimmed to near nothing. Only the glow of his spirit daggers drifted through the room, pale and wrong, catching on the emerald runes carved into his skin and mixing with the cold wash of stars sliding past the viewport. The air felt overheated—thick with scorched metal and burned power.
Ryzen stood at the glass, motionless, silhouette cut sharp against the streaking cosmos of transit space.
Kaede had warned me but seeing him like this still hooked under my ribs. He looked… abandoned. Not by the clan—by the universe. Like he was staring into the void because the void was the only thing that understood what had been taken.
His spirit daggers orbited in erratic patterns—emerald-lit blades carving drunken loops through the air.
Not fireflies.
Warnings.
Threats made physical.
The runes on his pale skin flickered wildly, pulsing bright, then guttering, then flaring again. I found myself counting the beats without meaning to. Uneven. Chaotic.
He didn’t turn when I entered.
Didn’t acknowledge me at all.
But beneath the flood of his emotion, I felt the instant he registered me—something sharp punching up through the chaos. Surprise, maybe. Or fear. It was hard to separate anything cleanly when the rest of him was screaming at full volume.
