The footsteps move away, though I can’t tell how much time passes before they do. Only the absence registers when it comes, a hollow space in the darkness that wasn't there before, and the silence he leaves behind fills the room like a tangible weight. Sleep doesn't come for a long time after.
Chapter Four
DRAZEX
Ididn't sleep. The admission settles into my bones, and I bury it beneath the morning's first tasks before it can take root. I've survived assassination attempts, family betrayals, and two decades of my father's lessons on the fatal nature of attachment. The impulse that pulled me to her door in the darkest hours, standing in the corridor outside her quarters with no purpose and no explanation, won’t undo me.
She heard me. I'm certain of it. A soldier learns to track every sound in her environment, and she's a soldier down to the marrow of her bones. She lay in that bed and listened to me breathe on the other side of the door, and she didn't call out, didn't demand explanation, didn't do any of the things a normal person might do when a predator stations himself outside her room in the dead of night.
She waited. And eventually, I left.
The memory scrapes against my thoughts as I pull up the morning's security feeds, cycling through compound activity.Patrol rotations are nominal, and someone has logged and verified supply deliveries. Korrel on third shift perimeter, steady as always. Two decades of service and the male has never missed a rotation.
A flag on the holding cell report draws my attention. The Thesskan merchant who defaulted on the shipping contract has been talking. He isn't confessing or begging, but offering information about House Korvan's movements in the lower sectors in exchange for consideration.
My father's rules are clear. Debtors who can't pay are processed and made examples of. Fear is currency on Vahiri Prime, and mercy is counterfeit that devalues the entire economy. The Thesskan should be sent to the labor pools by week's end.
The merchant has connections. Trade routes that thread through territories we've been trying to map for months. Knowledge that could benefit House Draven far longer than whatever lesson his breaking would teach.
I flag the file for standard processing.
This isn't the first time my instincts pull against my father's methods. The enforcer last month comes to mind. Vorath wanted him disciplined for a minor lapse in judgment. I argued for reassignment and lost, then watched the male's spirit crack under punishment that taught nothing except fear. The supplier two seasons back could have been cultivated into an asset, but Vorath turned him into a corpse in a canyon no one visits now.
Small divergences and buried disagreements have accumulated into a pattern I haven't examined because examining it would require acknowledging what it means.
I close the file. My father built House Draven into what it is. The methods work.
The thought settles wrong in my chest.
I ignore it.
The holding cells are quiet, their occupants learning the patience that captivity teaches or breaking against its walls.
The feed from the visitation room loads before conscious decision carries me there.
She's already inside.
The timestamp reads 0600, dawn by the compound's artificial cycle, and Maeve Vance sits across a metal table from her brother. Her hands rest folded in her lap, her spine straight against the chair's unforgiving back. Tomás looks worse than his file photos suggested. Eighteen months of gambling debts and bad decisions have sharpened the bones of his face until he resembles a male being consumed from within. His fingers twitch against the table’s surface, and his body betrays the tremors of whatever substances he’s been denied since we took him.
The audio feed carries their words into my office.
“I'm sorry.” His words crack on the second syllable, splitting open to reveal the wound beneath. “Mae, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for any of this to happen, I thought I could fix it, I thought if I could win enough to cover the first debt then everything would be fine...”
“Stop.” Her tone holds no anger and no accusation. The single word lands heavy, weighted by exhaustion so deep it has become its own kind of calm. “I didn't come here to listen to apologies, Tomás. I came to tell you what happens next.”
“What happens next is they kill me.” He laughs, and the sound holds no humor, only the jagged edge of hysteria pressing against whatever composure he has left. “Or sell me to the mines, which is the same thing with extra steps. Mae, you shouldn't have come. You should let me rot. I'm not worth this.”
“You're my brother.” The words cut through his spiral, precise as a blade. “You're an idiot who makes terrible decisions, butyou're my brother, and I will not let you die in a mining pit because you couldn't walk away from a card table.”
He stares at her. The trembling worsens, spreading up his arms until his entire body vibrates, emotions he cannot contain breaking through every barrier.
“What did you do?” His whisper barely carries. “Mae, what did you do?”
“I made a deal.” She does not look away from him. Does not soften the truth with comfortable lies. “I work for House Draven until your debt is cleared. My skills, my training. That's the arrangement.”
“You sold yourself.” Horror bleaches what little color remains in his face. “For me. You sold yourself to them for me.”
“I made a practical trade.” The correction carries no heat. “A combat medic is worth more than a gambling addict. The math was simple.”
