Her eyes flashed. "Then what is it?"
I met her gaze, my spymaster calm wrapped tight around the storm building inside me. "A contingency," I decided. "One that has waited far longer than either of us."
The words were measured. Controlled. Inside, they rang louder than I intended. I forced my attention away from her—away from the impossible pull of light and heat and unanswered variables—and let the strategist reassert itself. If she was right—if Earth appeared on the Starmap, not as one of the planets we had seeded, not as an anomaly, but as an anchor—then thiswas not a coincidence. The Starmap had only manifested when I accepted her. Accepted us.
The pattern across my skin shifted faintly, constellations aligning in configurations I tried to recall on my parents' skin. Memory is treacherous, even more so when it's filtered through grief. I tried to recall the old maps burned into my father's skin. The branching lines. The nodes of convergence. I didn't recall us ever discussing them or their meaning beyond the marking of a bond. Earth had never been spoken of in that context.
A pressure built behind my ribs. If Earth were not merely strategic—if it predated our recorded thresholds—then the Starmap was not a map of territory. It was a map of origin. And origin implied design.
Not divine design.
Structural.
If Earth anchored a convergence point older than Arkhevari intervention, then what else did the map indicate? Other nodes? Other worlds? Other thresholds, waiting to destabilize? Or awaken. I glanced at Nadine again, this time not as Aelyth, not as a variable, but as proof. If her world was written into the Starmap long before she existed, then this bond was not reactive. It was inevitable. And inevitability was a language I trusted less than war.
I inhaled slowly. "If Earth is a primary node, then it is not alone."
The strategist in me catalogued possibilities. The son in me remembered warnings. And somewhere beneath both, something colder stirred. If this map differs from my parents'… then either the Starmap had changed. Or history had.
"Nythor comes first," I decided, pulling my mind from its spiral down a hundred different paths I should take.
The words settled into the room with the weight of inevitability. Whatever was unfolding—whatever had been setinto motion by the marks on our skin and names thought erased—was larger than either of us. Larger than the Empire. Larger than the Arkhevari as they existed now.
She didn't argue.
That alone gave me pause.
"Fine," Nadine agreed after a moment, nodding once as if committing to a plan rather than conceding ground. "You find Nythor. I'll do some digging. On those gods. Ashera. El. Caelor. Whatever versions of them survived in human myth." Her eyes sharpened. "And I want access to everything the Pandraxians have on the Dark Abyss."
I inclined my head. Reasonable. Dangerous. Useful.
"Is there a way for me to talk to this Ella person?" she added. "Directly."
I considered it. Ella was already standing too close to the fire. Zapharos' bond to her had altered his judgment in ways he was still pretending not to notice. Bringing Nadine into that orbit would compound the risk. Keeping her isolated would be worse. If I took Nadine with me to retrieve Nythor, she would be in danger from Cryons, rebels, and Abyss-touched things that did not belong in any sane universe. If I returned her to Nox Eternum, she would still be in danger. The Abyss had noticed her. It would not forget.
And if I did nothing… I exhaled slowly.
"There are… methods," I concurred at last. "Limited ones. Let me think about it." If Nadine was in danger from the Dark Abyss, so was Ella. Like it or not, I didn't want anything to happen to Zapharos' female. Or him. I added grudgingly. She nodded, already plotting several steps ahead.Intrigued, she'd said. I shook my head.By the Abyss.
"I will not take you with me," I added before she could suggest it. "I will retrieve Nythor alone."
"Where will I be?" She questioned, placing both her fists on either side of her hips.
"Let me figure that out." I needed a moment alone.
Not because I was retreating, but because the implications were stacking faster than I could dismantle them.
The appearance of the Starmap glyphs had been… unexpected. I had known the bond was there. I hadfeltit ignite. But seeing the truth written into flesh—etched in light, precise and undeniable—had struck deeper than I was prepared for. Arkhevari truths tended to announce themselves with violence. This one had arrived with inevitability. To my astonishment, I found that I did not resent it. The Starmap marked us. Markedme.
For the first time since my mother died and my father's map faded from his skin, the Starmap had returned. Alive. Responsive. Awake. I remembered standing at my father's side as a child, tracing the lines with my eyes, wondering where they led, wondering why they vanished when balance was lost. Now they burned again.
On me.
On her.
I had barely allowed myself to think of Nadine as my Aelyth, had resisted the word even in the privacy of my own mind. But the Aelyth bond did not care for denial. It recorded truth, not preference. I wasn't displeased. Not with her.
She was more than I could have envisioned an Aelyth to be, challenging where others would have yielded, infuriating where others would have soothed, brilliant, stubborn, and relentlessly alive. She questioned me without fear. She did not revere me. Shemetme.
