I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head. “I don’t understand.”
“You said yourself that you could’ve been killed. Your mother knew you were a hair’s breadth from radiation exposure at any moment in the Shadowlands. One misstep from discovering that the planet isn’t poison to you at all, but power. And paying your ransom, if she ever intended to pay it, is far from a single-sleep-cycle process. Every passing moment, meanwhile … more risk of exposure. More risk of the lie being exposed.”
I feel like I’m drowning in Adria’s violet eyes, unable to pull in any air. But her gaze holds mine fast, no longer shielding me from even an inkling of truth. Believing I can carry it.
“So,” Adria says, “she deemed it better for you to dissolve in a sun serpent’s stomach than for you to discover what you really are.”
My voice is wire thin. “And what is that?”
Grating metal. A squeaking, stubbornly straight leg pressing up against stone. Amidst my racing thoughts, I almost forgot Aspect is here, having apparently rebooted during our intimate moment. As they stand, they insist, “Kori is—Aspect’s friend. Kori is—Adria’s friend. Kori is brave—and smart, and—still alive, despite—everything trying to—destroy Kori.”
I swallow hard. I square my shoulders, find my center. Aspect is right. By all accounts, I should be dead a thousand times over, but instead, I’m living proof of the impossible: a dayfolk reborn amidst the radiation, rather than swiftly silenced by it. My mother was willing to risk my mutilation or death by the sun serpents to prevent my ever happening upon the truth beyond her jurisdiction.
I suck in a deep breath, then blow it out through my nose. “There could be more of us. Dayfolk who don’t die from radiation exposure. There’s no way to know how deep this goes, how long my mother’s been lying to me. If I stay here …” A chill racks my frame, but I fight it back. “My mother could send something even worse to silence me. Ensure nobody ever finds out about this. But how far does the lie reach? Are there others? Why lie to me—to the dayfolk entirely? If I don’t find out—”
“Then the truth dies with you,” Adria finishes for me. The weight of that statement bears down on both of us like a thing with teeth, as terrifying as any sun serpent.
A robotic whirr, rising in volume. “Too much—for Aspect.”
“What?” Adria and I say in near unison, barely turning in time to see Aspect’s optical processors blink out and their body collapse in a haphazard heap to the floor all over again.
“S-stars above,” I stammer, sprinting to check Aspect for further injuries. But they have no exposed wires, no obviously visibly misplaced gears, nothing.
It seems that finally, even more so than their countless installed memories or even their fall into this pit, it’s a firsthand experience that overloaded their system into a temporary shutdown. An absurdly human thing for a robot that’s shown no signs of independent, sentient thought, but there’s far too much happening for me to dwell on that right now. It’s far from the weirdest thing Aspect has done thus far; I’m just unspeakably grateful that they’re with me and that they’re alive.
As long as they’re alive, I may still find a way to help their consciousnesswake.
With a clatter of loose limbs, I pull Aspect’s powered-down body close my chest. “I’ll have to do a manual reboot. Shutdown has only been known to happen to mechs from, like, core-system heat overload. Not …” I sigh. “Any ofthis.”
Adria rises to her feet. Even with her wounded left wing causing her to hunch, wincing with every motion, her bulk as compared to me makes my heart stumble against my ribs. Yet her voice is small, half strangled. “Will it help them?” she asks. “To be back in the sun?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your starship crashed at the Second Spire. Its core components are likely intact. With some repairs, it can still get you home. Fixing your armor should be no trouble either.”
I open my mouth to launch a comeback. No sound comes out.
“You said it yourself, Kori. Right now, you’re the only one with any idea of what your mother is plotting. If you stay here, you’ll never find your answers. She could send any manner of further monsters to ensure younever do.”
Adria moves to cross the space between us again, despite visibly tensing every time her injured wing shifts. The serpent slash across my own arm stings fiercely, too, but I’ve hardly been able to register it over the tumult of other thoughts—over the overwhelming reality of Adria’s lips having finally collided with mine.
“I thought I’d sacrificed everything for a chance at peace,” Adria muses. “A body that felt familiar to me. The lives of my parents. My perilous standing with the Shadow Court.” Both her hands settle lightly but firmly on my shoulders. “But not everything. Not yet.”
Again she kneels, eyes half shut, breaths pluming in the relentless cold, and leans her forehead against mine, level. Steady. “I have to let you go, Kori. You need to protect your people, as surely as I’ve fought to protect mine.”
My throat feels raw as if from screaming. I know she’s right, as hideous as the realization is. My mother tried to kill me, but the planet that should’ve finished the job brought rebirth instead. I need answers—not just for myself, but for every other subject of my mother’s unquestioned rule.
“And you can’t protect your people if I stay here,” I realize. “You’re already in the throes of civil war. And now I’ve brought monsters to your doorstep. Invoked the ire of my mother—maybe soon a full-blown dayfolk army.” Gently lowering Aspect’s body to the ground, I rise to my own feet. “You’re right, Adria. I have to go home.”
Home.The word tastes sour, its shape stinging on my tongue. When did this lightless, frozen wasteland start to feel more like home than the sunny dunes surrounding my settlement? I don’t know anymore.
“And I will get you there,” Adria says, resolute. “So help me, I won’t be the one to stand in the way of your answers. You’ve come too far, seen too much, to risk being silenced in the shadows. And I …” She stands, too, rising several feet above me once again, and stares off as if she can see something distinct in the distance. “In the wake of this assault, I’ll rally my people. I’ll repair my fortress. I’ll ensure Azarii does not have his victory—willneverhave a world where nightfolk identity is rooted in shame.”
Despite its crushing weight, despite everything bearing down upon us, Adria carries the responsibility with a regal air. More than ever, she sounds like a queen.
“I know you’re right,” I sigh. “I know you have to stay, to stop this war. I have to go, if I’m ever to find my own place in the world. But … this can’t be it, can it?” My heartbeat echoes in my eardrums. I swallow hard on a sudden sob. “I can’t have come all this way—found you, fought you, finally kissed you—just to disappear back into the sun.”
“I can’t send you back with a nightfolk comms tablet unless I want your entire nation to doubt your loyalties. Which means we’ll have no way to communicate across the Passage.” Wavering, Adria’s voice drops an octave. “Promise you’ll come back to me,” she breathes, more a plea than an order, all posturing between us incinerated the moment our lips finally met. Her hand finds the side of my face again, holds it like I’m fragile as a butterfly’s wing. “Even if you can never stay, even if the daylight will always mark your home … come back to me, Kori, and remind me why we’re fighting.”
