He is just another towering golden silhouette, but he is gaunt and swaying on his feet. Then the light catches the side of his face and my stomach drops.
I remember him. The warrior with the scar so vicious it splits his face into two completely different people depending on which side of him you stand on. I only saw him once. Months ago. When Justine brought the Drakav to rescue us. He was with them.
He is barely recognizable now. There are angry new scars raking across his ribs and shoulder, layered on top of older ones. Pale dust covers every line and ridge of his skin.
Sorn.
Nobody breathes.
He walks forward, each step dragging as he walks blindly past the other Drakav. He does not acknowledge them. Does not even glance their way. He heads straight for the central fire where he stops directly in front of Kol. The dra-dam is already on his feet.
Sorn slowly outstretches his hand. The movement is agonizing, like whatever he is holding weighs a thousand pounds.
Then, he opens his palm.
It is a strip of fabric. Faded. Sun-bleached nearly white. There is a faint pattern along one surviving edge. Tiny, pale-yellow flowers with green stems. It is the kind of cheap, cheerful cotton print you would find on a summer tank top from Target. And I know that print. I know it because I sat across from it on the transport shuttle, too terrified to look out the window, tracing those little printed flowers with my eyes instead. And because I watched the woman wearing it roll up the sleeves of that exact top during our first week on this planet, her eyes worried as she complained the sweat was making her arms sticky.
Hannah.
The silence in the cavern is so weighted I swear I can hear the fire actively eating oxygen, and the shallow rasp of Sorn’s breathing.
Nobody moves. Every warrior in the cavern has become a golden statue. I cannot hear what is happening in the mindspace, but I can feel the backdraft of it. Like physical pressure in the air. Whatever Sorn is currently projecting into their heads, it is weighty enough that two of the warriors drop to their knees on the stone floor.
Pam is the first to break. It is a small, high hitching sob that she immediately catches behind both hands. Lucy grips Pam’s arm tight, but Lucy’s own face is rapidly crumbling. Alex wraps her arms around herself, her eyes watering as she stares unfocused at the scrap of fabric. Justine turns blindly and buries her face into Rok’s chest. His arms close around her, his glow flaring and stuttering the way it only does when he comforts her.
My stomach does a sick flip. I remember Hannah sitting across from me on the transport, optimistic about our new jobs, entirely unaware that we were about to be stranded on a sand-blasted alien hellscape.
I slowly count to five in my head.Uno. Dos. Tres. Cuatro. Cinco.
The sound of crying is escalating, bouncing sharply off the stone walls. If the panic takes root, it will spread.
I force my feet to move.
I step out of the shadows of the tunnel and into the bright, open space of the main cavern.
The motion acts like a tripwire. Every single pair of eyes snaps to me.
The weight of that undivided attention is staggering. Twenty human women looking at me with wet, desperate faces. A dozen Drakav are static, their amber eyes locked onto me through the silence.
My knees threaten to buckle. The dry cavern air burns the back of my throat.
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I have no comfort. No grand speech. No plan. I just have two bleeding hands and the sharp taste of bile thick on my tongue.
So I close my mouth. I look down at my raw, cracked knuckles. The sharp sting of torn skin grounds me. I look back up, scanning the tear-streaked faces watching me. I should say something practical. Something about staying busy, about keeping routines. About not letting grief slow us down because the deadly dust does not stop swirling just because we are hurting.
But the words that come out are different.
“She sat across from me on the shuttle.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “She wore a top with little flowers on it and she told me she was excited about the new job.” I stop and swallow hard over a painful lump in my throat. “Hannah was one of us. And she mattered.”
Alex nods, her lips pressed into a thin, trembling line. Lucy wipes her wet face with the back of her dust-caked hand.
My gaze shifts to Sorn. The instant my eyes land on him, he flinches.
His broad shoulders curve inward, caving into his chest as though the simple weight of my attention burns him. He takes an excessively wide arc around our group, stepping so far back his arm scrapes the cavern wall. He moves as if terrified his mere nearness might upset us.
Upon reaching the deepest corner of the cavern, he collapses, his back grinding against the stone as he slides down. He immediately jerks his head away, thrusting the ruined, scarred half of his face into the darkest patch of shadows. He pulls his knees tight to his chest, locking his thick arms around them to make himself as small as possible.
He does not look up again.
