At Adria’s side, her comms tablet dings, blessedly interrupting my train of thought. “Forgive me.” She sighs, pressing a button to read out her most recent message.
“From Thaane: Three of your soldiers from the battle at the gate are in the infirmary,” says the automated voice.“Two are expected to live. The third is critical. It may be wise to visit her and instill some morale, to give her the best chance of recovery.”
My head spins. I want to offer some semblance of comfort, a shred of encouragement, anything at all, but Adria hand-waves my words away. “The war is a constant. Right now, I’m here, not in the infirmary. I’ll make a visit as soon as I can.”
“Adria …” I start, but my voice dwindles away. There’s nothing worthwhile to say, nothing I can do to lessen the burden of this war.
She turns back to my mech, eyes narrowed in deep thought. “So how do you intend to stabilize Aspect? Uninstall the new memory?”
I can’t help but arch an eyebrow. “And reject your ever-so-generous, intensely judgmental gift? Never. But I’ll need to counterbalance it as a sort of … mood stabilizer, if you will. Balance with a positive perception of the dayfolk.”
Adria laughs again. “So what you’re saying is you need to install a memory of … hugging, or something?”
“I hate that you’re right.”
“I love when I’m right.”
I roll my eyes so hard, I imagine she can hear the motion through my mask. “You would. Royalty and all.”
“Says the princess to the queen.”
“Oh, I’m no better.”
“You’re worse.”
“The worst of them all.”
Adria laughs again at that, and it’s a little looser this time, airy. Unburdened. The sound sends a rush of heat to my cheeks that I can’t explain. “It does go to your head, being royalty. I ought to stop complaining about the insurrection. It has a way of keeping me humble.” Her violet gaze is so intense, I’d nearly swear she could see my own irises despite my mask, our stares locked, magnetic; I’m unable to look away even if I’d wanted to. “Though you aren’t so terrible at doing that yourself, Kori.”
I still can’t explain what it does to me to hear her address me by name. Not even name and title, just name, like we’re on equal footing despite her holding all the power here, like she’d like to know the person before she collects the ransom. She towers more than two feet above me, a bulk of muscle where I’m only lean limbs, a queen where I’m a trespasser, utterly capable of commanding this situation according to her desires. But yet, she lets me take my awkward verbal swings at her, toys with me in turn.
It isn’t just that I’m not properly afraid of her anymore; it’s that I think Ilikethis. The push and pull, the easy banter, even when she could uproot my safe political standing in the Shadowlands with a stray word, even when she could easily lift me clean off the ground and pin me to the wall with a single clawed hand and—
I can feel my heartbeat hammering in my throat, and I really,reallydon’t want to analyze why that is.
Thankfully, Aspect has launched into another independent monologue about the evils of my people and the virtues of the enormous, wickedly grinning winged woman before me, so that gives me an excuse to look away.
“Actually …” Despite my continued avoidance of her gaze, Adria lays a hand on my shoulder. “I may have a solution for you. A happy memory.”
I blink, not understanding. “You mean another record.”
“No, I mean a memory.” The hand on my shoulder squeezes, a reassurance; she’s so much stronger than me that it still hurts a bit, but I can tell that wasn’t the intent. I don’t pull away. “Lail—the one you call ’Alpha’—was taken into custody as well, after I captured you. She revealed in interrogation that the contents, while treason against me and my kingdom, were to her a moment of hope. An instant of belief that things could get better. I have yet to gain access to the Morpheus sphere myself, but if she could be convinced to transfer access rights … if you think the memory would help—”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. This is what I came here for in the first place, isn’t it? Alpha’s memory? An instant of utterly human hope, set alight in someone the dayfolk would have called a mere mutant? “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”
Unthinking, overcome with wild hope of my own, I throw my arms around the hulking mountain of muscle that is the Shadowlands’ queen. She tenses like a rifle’s trigger, poised to lurch away, but then she doesn’t. Not at all. Instead I feel one clawed hand, large enough to palm my entire skull, lightly settle against my back, barely brushing my armor but returning the gesture. Trembling. Afraid of breaking me? Afraid we’ve broken a boundary that can never be erected again?
All I know is she’s restored my best chance at bringing my best friend to life, and I’m unspeakably grateful.
Even as Aspect continues raving in the background. “Kori does not—deserve hugs. Kori deserves—JUDGMENT!”
The following cycles fall into a battle-march rhythm, though I hardly know what I’m fighting anymore, save for sleep’s ever-encroaching, gnarled grasp. The night visions only grow worse in the Shadowlands’ eternal void, and no matter how I try to extend my time awake, I’mpulled back into sleep like it’s a stubborn tide always dragging me back under the dark water. Aspect, who has never spent so much uninterrupted time by my side before this doomed adventure, quickly starts to recognize my nightmares’ symptoms.
But I’m so bone-deep tired that I’m falling asleep in impossible positions—knees curled to my chest in an alcove of the hallway, forehead pressed to the side of a mattress I never actually reached, and one regrettable occasion when I woke up because I’d started drooling (drooling!) on the inside of my mask, which my sleep-deprived self had apparently decided was a perfectly functional pillow all by itself.
The exhaustion is so severe that even Aspect rattling my teeth in my jaw (or squeaking their peg leg as obnoxiously as possible) isn’t enough to rescue me from the nightmares.
It’s always the same series of piercingly vivid sensations, the order remixed but the content the same. The medical table, cold against my naked back. The splitting pain in my skull. The needle at my wrist. Chloe’s voice:Kori, can you hear me?
