She stirs. Her lips part.
“Garokk…” she murmurs.
Not fear. Not accusation.
My name.
I lower myself to sit, blade across my lap, shoulders hunched forward. The scent of her hair carries on the air—faint citrus, metal, and blood. I hate how much I already know that smell.
This ship gave me fifty years of solitude.
And I used every one of them to forget who I used to be.
Now, one night with her and I remember everything.
I remember how it felt to hold someone without squeezing the life out of them. I remember the sound of laughter, real laughter—not the mocking kind from my enemies or the hollow kind from warlords drunk on glory. Hers is different. Human. Messy.
It curls around the rust in my bones and takes root.
I shift my weight, careful not to disturb her. My gaze stays fixed on the shattered dome above. Stars burn through the cracks—distant suns I once fought beneath. Now they look cold. Distant. Irrelevant.
Because everything I care about is breathing just six feet away, curled up on a bed of glowing moss.
And I’ll kill the universe if it tries to take that from me.
CHAPTER 8
ISOLDE
Iwake to a fire that smells like ash and old wood and something sweet beneath it.
The glow is soft—a ragged flame dancing against the vines above, throwing flickers across the fungal stalks, making the glowing moss pulse beneath us as if it’s breathing. I blink, trying to clear the fog in my brain—the adrenaline hangover, the exhaustion, the weird comfort of being alive when I thought I might not be.
He’s there.
Garokk kneels near the fire, a battered cooking pot perched over the coals, steam curling upward in ghostly ribbons. His silhouette is monstrous and somehow gentle in the flicker, scales colored by the firelight in bronze and crimson. He glances up and meets my eyes. His expression—surprisingly soft. Maybe relieved. Maybe just aware.
“Morning,” he says, voice low, gravel-rough but warm.
“Morning,” I manage, pushing myself upright. My ribs ache where One Horn got me, and I’m sore all over. But here… I feel safe. Nestled in this wild ruin, a wreck of a starship, but safe.
“Eat,” he says, nodding toward the pot.
I slide off the moss-bed and cross the gap. My boots crunch softly on leaf-litter and broken tile. I sit on a chunk of flat rock, the warmth of the fire pressing gentle relief into my flesh. I inhale the scent—wood smoke, fungus, metal corrosion, and him. All mixed together. I never thought I’d find a scent I could call home, but maybe I just did.
He ladles something into a bowl—grainy mush, off-white with little flecks of herbs. I wrinkle my nose. “What is it?”
“Old reserve,” he says. “Bland but edible.”
I snort. “Gourmet enough for a survival meal.”
He cracks a half-smile—barely. “Eat.”
I taste it. Warm. Soft. Doesn’t explode with flavor, but that’s fine. I’m starving. I shovel more in. The moss glows in the dark around me, vines whispering in the hush as if they’re gossiping about the intruders, the shooters, the chase. The Hulk is alive. And so are we. Temporarily.
He sits opposite me, the pale firelight catching something in his eyes—the scar, the yellow gold, the war-worn hardness. We eat in silence for a moment. I watch him. He watches the fire. I decide I like this version of him—silent, unhurried. Not savage. Guarding me.
Finally, I push my bowl away. “So…” I start, running a hand over my hair where the purple strands catch the flame. “I guess we got a weird truce going.”
