Not war. Not rage.
Not survival.
Return.
I’m coming back.
Stars help anyone who gets in my way.
CHAPTER 15
ISOLDE
Nine months.
That’s how long it’s been since I stood in the wreckage of a warship, heart bleeding louder than my voice, staring through the void where he used to be.
Now I lie in a sterile medbay with my knees drawn and sweat cooling down my back, and there’s a baby on my chest who’s rewriting the laws of what I thought I could feel.
He’s small. Red-scaled. Golden-eyed.
So golden it hurts.
The nurse, young and too green to know how to hide her reaction, lets out a quiet gasp.
“Is he?—?”
“He’smine,” I say before she can finish.
And that’s it.
I don’t elaborate. I don’t owe anyone a damn thing.
The airin the medbay is cold and recycled. I can still smell the acrid tang of sterilizers, mixed with something softer—new skin, new life, warm and raw and wild. His fingers curl aroundthe edge of the blanket. His breath comes in these tiny, rhythmic huffs, like he’s still unsure whether this place is real.
I get it, kid.
Me too.
There are whispers, of course. Rumors with teeth.
Isolde Verrix, once the face of diplomacy and daughter of Novaria’s high table, now the subject of gossip columns and half-censored newsfeeds.
She vanished. She resurfaced. She gave birth in a private medbay with no entourage, no statement, no press.
A child no one expected.
A child that doesn’t look like any human-only childshould.
But I say nothing. I don’t grant interviews. I don’t offer explanations. I don’t even name the father.
They can guess.
Theywillguess.
I keep my son close and my story closer.
I will raise him without fanfare.
