"It's using him tolure," I whispered.
Ashley went still.
"Who is luring whom?" she demanded, already knowing the answer from the way my face must have looked.
I couldn't say it. That would make it too real. But the bond was slipping, and in that slippage, I felt something else, an unfamiliar steadiness creeping into Dravok's aura. Not calm. A cold alignment. Like a blade being honed.
"He's not…" I shook my head, denial trying to claw its way in. "He's not supposed to—his aura was gold, Ashley. It was—he was?—"
"What?" she demanded, voice sharper now. "Nadine, what is happening?"
My eyes scanned the data again, and I saw the missing piece that made my blood turn to ice. The pull. The spiral. The containment. The pressure. This was a trap designed for an Arkhevari. Nythor wasn't the speaker or conductor. He was the bait.
Dravok wasn't the rescuer.
He was the prize.
"Oh no," I whispered, and this time it came out like a prayer.
Ashley's face hardened into soldier-focus. "What do you need?"
I couldn't breathe. Because the bond wasn't just slipping. It was beingrewritten. The Starmap under my skin flared, lines brightened, then thinned, as if the constellation itself was being stretched toward a point that wasn't me. And with it came a quiet, devastating terror: What if he forgot me?
Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. What if the thing pulling him down pulled him far enough thatNadinebecame just a name attached to data? A concept. An inconvenience. I'dwatched him earlier fight his own instincts. I'd watched him learn to soften. To laugh. To touch me like he meant it.
If something took that?—
If something tookhim?—
My throat closed.
Ashley's voice cut through the spiral. "Nadine."
I forced my eyes to hers.
"What," she said again, quieter this time, "is happening to Dravok?"
I swallowed the ache in my chest and spoke anyway. "He's being enthralled."
Ashley's pupils widened. I knew that look. I had given it to people a hundred times when I thought they were out of their minds. I didn't care. "If I'm right," I continued, my words tumbling out now because stopping meant falling apart, "then the Harrowed One isn't just a consequence. It's strategic. It's not trying to speak through Nythor—it's trying toensnarea stronger Arkhevari so it can anchor itself into reality through him."
Ashley's jaw tightened, and though she still looked at me as if I'd lost my marbles, her strategic mind was working. Something I was eternally grateful for. "So we have to pull him out."
"Yes," I agreed, not liking how my voice shook. "Before the bond breaks completely."
Ashley reached for the comm on her wrist. "Xandros," she snapped the moment it connected. "Get in here. Now."
A beat. Then his voice, "Ashley?"
"Now," she repeated, and he didn't argue.
I stared back at my palmtop, fingers flying as I searched for any sign, any variable, any way to measure what was happening. The Starmap pulsed again.
Brighter.
Then thinner.
And through the bond, faint as a dying signal, I felt Dravok's attention slide, like someone turning his head away from the sound of my voice. A new kind of calm settled in its place. Not his father's golden aura. Not the warmth he'd found with me. Something darker. Something that felt likedestruction. My vision blurred.
