Then I leave, because the ship still hums with war, and Gur still burns, and Morazin still breathes in cuffs, and the galaxy is about to decide whether it’s brave enough to accept the truth.
And if it isn’t?—
Then criminals will have to teach it.
CHAPTER 21
JORDAN
Gur looks different when you come back with blood under your nails and a galaxy-wide panic in your wake.
From orbit, the planet is still that familiar smear of bruised blues and dirty golds, storm bands swirling over industrial continents like they’re trying to scrub the place clean and failing. But when the Nun’s Tooth drops through atmosphere and the windows haze with heat, I can feel the city’s mood through the ship—like static on skin, like the air itself is bracing for impact.
The Defrocked Nun glows before we even dock, neon bleeding into haze, the casino’s external signage flickering like it’s trying to wink at the universe and say nothing’s wrong here, while streets around it pulse with checkpoint lights and the hard, tight movement of crews who’ve stopped pretending this is just “business.”
My side aches in a steady throb that’s become its own annoying soundtrack. The med wrap pulls when I shift, and the pain is sharp enough to keep me honest. I taste antiseptic still, like it got into my teeth and decided to squat.
Lonari insists on walking me off the ship like I’m a fragile artifact.
I hate it.
I also don’t entirely hate it.
“Don’t hover,” I mutter as we move down the docking ramp. The air in the bay is warmer than the ship, thick with fuel and dust, and it carries Gur’s familiar cocktail: spice from street stalls, exhaust, stale smoke, and the faint sweet rot of too many bodies packed too close to too much industry.
Lonari’s gaze doesn’t leave the perimeter. “I’m not hovering.”
“You’re hovering,” I insist.
He finally looks at me, eyes dark and flat. “You got shot.”
“Grazed,” I correct.
He bares his teeth. “If I hear you say ‘grazed’ again, I’m going to toss you back into the medbay and lock the door.”
I roll my eyes carefully. “Love that for me. Imprisoned by a mobster because I’m inconveniently alive.”
Renn walks ahead of us, clearing a path. He keeps glancing back like he’s expecting me to collapse any second just to spite him.
The moment we hit the casino’s internal corridor, the noise changes. The Defrocked Nun is trying to be itself—music swelling, lights pulsing, gamblers shouting, chips clacking, bartenders moving like they’re choreographed—but underneath the performance is tension so thick it makes my skin prickle.
People see me.
They recognize me.
Some stare like I’m a saint.
Some glare like I’m a bomb.
Both reactions make me want to crawl out of my skin.
We round the corner into the main lobby and it’s chaos.
Merchants—actual merchants, not just low-level hustlers—have flooded the place. They’re dressed in expensive coats and layered fabrics meant to signal status, but their eyes are wideand frantic, their voices sharp, their hands gesturing too fast. They look like a stampede that learned to speak.
A Kaijen captain is trying to hold them back near the central fountain, palms up in a calming gesture that isn’t working.
“—my shipments are frozen! Do you have any idea what your little broadcast did?” one man yells, face red.
