Then, the door hisses open.
I step inside without invitation.
The room’s dim, lit only by the window stretched across one curved wall. Garokk stands in front of it, shirtless, his back turned to me. Muscles taut, posture still as stone. The viewbehind him is a sea of pinpricked lights, constellations fractured by the slow spin of the ring.
His back is a battlefield.
Jagged lines.
Healed-over burns.
Scars like claw marks and deep shrapnel grooves. Not artful. Not survivable in the usual way. This is someone who didn’t just crawl from wreckage—hebargainedwith death and paid in flesh.
I should say something.
I don’t.
He doesn’t turn.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, voice low.
“Wasn’t trying.”
His reflection in the window flickers faintly when I move closer, the light catching the curve of my hip, the bare of my collarbone. I’m not here for seduction.
But the air between us doesn’t know that.
I stop a few feet from him. Arms folded. To keep them from reaching. Or shaking.
“Pyramus asked if he could see you,” I say.
That gets him.
His spine shifts. Just a flicker of breath too sharp.
“What’d you tell him?” he asks.
“That it’s his choice. That you’re not going anywhere.”
He nods once. Still doesn’t turn.
“I didn’t come here to talk about him,” I say.
“Then why’d you come?”
I stare at the back of his neck.
“Because I need to understand.”
He finally turns.
Gods.
His face is the same, but not.
Lines deeper.
Eyes heavier.
