"I can't move," he said—or didn't say, it was hard to tell at this point what was happening in my mind and what I was actually seeing and hearing. Either way, the words bloomed, familiar and intimate and achinglyhim.
Tears blurred my vision. "I don't know how to release you," I cried. "Or them. I don't even know how I did this in the first place."
I do.The answer came gently, steady despite the pain threading through it.Listen.I stilled instantly, clutching him tighter, focusing with everything I had left.You didn't trap them.You aligned them. You forced their intent into phase.The words shouldn't have made sense. Yet they did.Let go of the pressure,he continued.Don't push. Just… stop holding.
My breath shuddered out of me. I closed my eyes and did exactly that. I released the strain I hadn't even realized I was maintaining, the desperate, rigid focus that had locked everything in place. I let it dissolve, imagining my grip loosening, my mind stepping back.
The effect was immediate.
Motion rushed back into the room like a wave breaking. Xandros staggered a step, swearing viciously as his body unlocked. Weapons lowered with clatters and startled curses. Ashley sucked in a sharp breath, and her hand flew to her chest.
Xandros spun toward me, fury and alarm warring on his face. "What the hell did you?—"
"Take the fields off him," I demanded, my voice raw but unshaking.
He stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "I don't think that is a good idea."
"Do it."
"Nadine—"
"Do it," I repeated, louder now. "Or I paralyze the entire ship."
The words came out before I could stop them. They hung in the air, heavy and irrevocable. I froze.Did I just… horror flickered through me, not at the threat, but at the certainty behind it. I meant it.
Somewhere between Cronack and the Abyss, between love and terror and loss, something in me had shifted. I didn't know what I was capable of anymore. But I had a feeling that there weren't many lines I wouldn't cross.
Xandros saw it too.
My resolve must have been written all over my face, my posture. He hesitated only a second longer.
"Stand down," he snapped to his soldiers. Then, reluctantly, "Drop the fields. Slowly."
The hum around Dravok changed pitch, faded. I held him tighter as the restraints released, as his body finally responded to gravity and breath and weight again. He exhaled, long and shuddering. I pressed my lips to his temple, tears soaking into his skin. "Stay," I whispered, my voice breaking. "Please. Just… stay."
His presence brushed against my mind, weak, but warm. Steady.I'm here.
Behind us, Xandros watched with a mixture of awe and dread. And I knew—with a clarity that terrified me—that whatever I had just become… There was no going back.
The cabin was quiet.Not the enforced silence of containment or the brittle stillness of command corridors, but something softer. Lived-in. Temporary. Ours, at least for now.
Nadine sat on the edge of the bed, her knees drawn up, her hands folded loosely in her lap. The lights were dimmed low, casting warm shadows instead of the harsh brilliance of the ship's systems. I stood a few steps away, watching her like she might vanish if I blinked.
Xandros had left us alone. Not without hesitation. I could feel his wariness, sharp and coiled, and not just toward me anymore. Towardher. The realization sat heavy in my chest. Whatever had shifted back there hadn't gone unnoticed.
Good. They should be afraid.
Yet, when I looked at Nadine, fear was the last thing I felt. I couldn't stop grinning. The memory replayed itself unbidden, her on her knees on the containment floor, sweat-slicked and shaking, eyes blazing with impossible resolve as she bent the room to her will. The way the soldiers froze. The wayIhad frozen, caught between awe and something dangerously close to pride.
Who would have suspected such a wild thing beneath that scientific exterior?
She had been formidable.
She was formidable.
And she was MINE.
The thought struck me with such force I had to turn away, dragging a hand through my hair. My breath hitched as the weight of it hit all at once. Gods. I had almost lost her. Lost her because ofme. Because I hadn't been strong enough. Because I hadn't understood what was happening to me until my hands were already around her throat, and the horror of it burned itself into whatever soul I had left. I turned back to her.
