No one needed to.
Zirene turned. Walked toward theShadowClaw. Each step felt like fighting gravity, like moving through water, like leaving pieces of himself scattered behind on the platform.
He paused at the ramp.
One last look.
Selena stood with their cubs pressed against her, the clan arrayed at her back, her spots glowing soft orangish yellow in the morning light. The swell of her belly where his daughter grew. The tear tracks drying on her cheeks. The way she held herself upright despite everything—his Nova, his Beacon, the center of his universe staying strong while he flew toward the darkness.
He memorized her.
Every line of her face. Every shimmer of her spots. The way her short silver hair caught the light like captured Starfire, wistfully blowing in the light sea breeze. The fierce, unbreakable love blazing through her gaze.
Then he boarded.
The ramp sealed behind him with a hiss of hydraulics. B was already moving toward the cockpit, her steps measured, giving Zirene a moment of privacy he hadn’t asked for but desperately needed.
Zirene pressed his palm flat against the viewport as the engines ignited.
Through the reinforced glass, he watched Selena watch him. Watched her hold their cubs closer—Meti’s silver fur, Nocrez’s and Neazzos’s dark striped forms pressing tight against their mother. Watched his clanbrothers close ranks around the Nova he was leaving behind.
TheShadowClawlifted.
The platform shrank beneath them. The crowd became a blur of rainbow colors—both dark and light, all the shades of his people—Destima’s citizens—becoming one as distance swallowed them whole.
Higher. Faster. The atmosphere thinned, and the sky darkened from azure to indigo to the endless black of space.
His shadow curled around him, restless and mourning.
“We’ll see her again,” he murmured—to himself, to the shadow, to whatever Fates and Stars that might be listening. “In the dreamscape. Every night.”
Zirene stayed at the viewport until Destima was nothing but a distant moon—one light among millions, indistinguishable from the rest. His home. His family. His heart.
“Set course for the front lines,” he called to B. His voice came out steady. The voice of a Sovereign. “Maximum speed.”
“Already done.” B’s reply drifted back from the cockpit. “ETA: forty-seven hours.”
Forty-seven hours until he reached the war. Forty-seven hours of travel, of planning, of joining the frontlines of another war.
Zirene turned from the viewport. Straightened his shoulders. Let the mask of the Sovereign settle back into place, covering the cracks, hiding the breaks, presenting the face his people needed to see as he entered the royal war room.
Behind him, Destima vanished into the infinite dark.
11
Selena
The pool sparkled under Destima’s morning light, but I couldn’t feel the warmth.
I sat beneath the gazebo in the villa’s private backyard, watching ripples dance across turquoise water while something cold and hollow carved itself beneath my ribs. Tori pressed close on my left, her presence a comfort even now. The sapphire and emerald streaks in her long blonde hair caught the light when she shifted, bright against the white of her sundress. Oeta occupied the space on my right, her fuchsia aura flickering with the kind of quiet concern she never voiced aloud.
The soft cushions beneath us should have been comfortable. The morning breeze should have been soothing, carrying the scent of salt and blooming vines from the villa’s gardens.
None of it touched the ice forming in my chest.
My hands rested on my belly. Kaede’s daughter shifted inside me—a tiny flutter that should have grounded me, should have reminded me of everything I had to protect, to live for, to fight for.
It didn’t.
