"Safeguards."
"A babysitting committee," I corrected. "To watch what I do."
"They're for your protection."
"If they follow me," I warned, "they'll slow me down. If they interfere, they'll die. That will complicate your governance."
A long pause followed. Daryus inclined his head. "Proceed alone then. But know that I will help in any capacity I can."
The doors opened, and before I could respond, my eyes fell onher. Her! The bond snapped into place with violent clarity, no slow awareness, no gradual pull. One instant, the universe was ordered, hostile but manageable; the next, itreorientedaround a single point of gravity that had nothing to do with the Dark Abyss.
No.
Absolutely not.
That wasnotsupposed to happen.
I turned despite myself. She stood straight across from me, half absorbed in a data slate small enough to fit in one hand, a palmtop device, one that the Pandraxians preferred. She looked up as if she'd felt my attention the way I'd felt her existence, and for a fraction of a second, the universe forgot how to breathe.
I had seen a human before. I had an idea what they looked like. I had stood beside Ella in the Hall of Seven and watched Zapharos unravel himself willingly. This was different.
Her hair was a soft, impossible shade of blonde, wavy and thick, twisted into a loose bun that had surrendered to physics. Strands escaped along her neck and temples, catching the light as she moved. Her eyes—stars above and below—blue. Not pale. Not sharp. Deep. Endless. The kind of blue that suggested oceans that could drown worlds if they chose to. They took me in with frank curiosity, no fear, no awe. Her body didn't help matters. Full breasts, generous hips, proportions that made absolutely no evolutionary sense, yet somehow aligned perfectly with my vision. My mouth went dry; heat coiled low and sharp in my gut with a ferocity I had not felt in eons. By the Shattered Void of the First Collapse, who in the name of Ashfall Prime was she, and what catastrophic error had placed herhere?
"Oh—Doctor Phillips?" Emperor Daryus' voice ripped me back into reality, glancing past me with polite distraction. "Did you need something?"
Doctor.
Phillips.
Daryus cleared his throat, far too pleased with himself. "Dravok. This is Doctor Phillips, from Earth."No Frygg,I thought darkly. "She is assisting me in gathering data on the Dark Abyss," the emperor continued. "She's quite the expert in her field."
My gaze snapped back to her. Expert. A human.
Aelyth.
"Doctor Phillips," Daryus went on, "this is Dravok, one of the Arkhevari I told you about."
He had told her about us?
We stared at each other.
Too long.
Too intensely.
My mind went out to probe hers, but there was nothing. Only blackness. Confused and infuriated, I tried again, deeper, harder. Nothing. It was like encountering a brick wall. This had never happened to me. The bond hummed—tight, insistent, furious—and I wanted to tear it out by the roots. What good was it if I couldn't even read her mind? I was ready to sever every single nerve ending in my body, but then Nythor chose that moment to invade my skull.Thirty-two over nine—negative curvature sings when observed—don't pull yet—distance lies—the wound listens?—
I hissed under my breath and shook my head, words slipped out of me before I could stop them. "…thirty-two over nine… curvature collapse… don't extract yet…"
Doctor Phillips and Emperor Daryus stared at me in silence. I closed my mouth. Damn it. Damn Nythor. "Sorry," I apologized stiffly. "Oracle nonsense. It happens."
She blinked, and then the most distracting thing happened: she smiled. Not kindly. Interested. "Oh," her eyes lit up like she'd just been handed a puzzle she'd been waiting her whole life to solve. "That's not nonsense."
Every muscle in my body went rigid. Even before she stepped closer. "It's a predictive ratio. He's describing spatial asymmetry at the event horizon, thirty-two over nine is the variance factor between observed mass and actual gravitational influence." I stared at her. She didn't seem to notice. "The wound listensisn't metaphorical," she continued briskly. "It's feedback. Observer effect amplified by singularity resonance. I read something similar in one of the pre-Collapse Pandraxian archives. Thank you for letting me access those, by the way, Your Imperial Highness."
Daryus inclined his head smugly.
I did not take my eyes off her. "You can decipher that," I questioned, baffled.
