Naeris was many things. Brilliant. Defiant. Sharp-tongued and stubborn enough to challenge me at every opportunity. Compassionate in ways she did not even recognize. Beautiful enough to bring an ancient warrior to his knees. But above all, she was a female of extraordinary worth.
She wasnotan ornament.Nota broodmare.Nota commodity to be bought and sold.
She was the living counterpart to my soul.
My Aelyth.
The one being in all creation who made me believe that perhaps I was not irredeemably broken. The notion that anyone had ever treated her as less than sacred made my blood boil.
I might never be worthy of her.
That truth had haunted me from the moment the bond awakened. Naeris was light and fire and unbreakable will. She was everything the cosmos had ever created that was fierce and beautiful and good. I was the male born in the Abyss, marked by darkness, forged from shadows I still did not fully understand. But worthy or not no longer mattered matter.
By the stars. By the seven suns. By the endless darkness that had birthed me.
She was mine.
Not as a possession.
Not as a conquest.
But as the other half of my soul. The female written into my very existence. The only being in all creation who could look atthe worst parts of me and still choose to stay. And I was prepared to do anything—anything—to become the male she deserved.
I would tear down empires.
I would burn worlds.
I would walk back into Nox Eternum itself and face every horror the Harrowed One could unleash.
I would rip the darkness out of my own soul with my bare hands if that was what it took.
Because if the cosmos granted me the impossible gift of Naeris, then I would spend the rest of eternity proving that even a creature born of the Abyss could become worthy of the light.
I forced myself to inhale slowly.
Naeris needed space.
She had not grown up hearing stories of the Aelyth bond. She had not spent her life knowing that somewhere in the cosmos, a soul existed who was meant to complete her. She had been taught to distrust destiny. To question affection. To believe that desire was a tool others used to control her. Of course she was frightened. Of course she needed time to decide whether what she felt for me belonged to her or to the bond.
The rational part of me understood all of that.
The rest of me wanted to tear through this ship, drag her into my arms, and kiss her until she forgot every lie she had ever been told. Instead, I waited.
Badly.
I caught fleeting glimpses of her in corridors and common rooms, every sighting both torture and reassurance. She was safe. She was thinking. She had not rejected me.
The golden thread between us remained warm and unbroken. Sometimes I felt her confusion. Sometimes her desire. Sometimes, a fierce yearning so potent it brought me to the brink of madness.
Way beneath it all, there was affection, growing stronger by the hour.
She loved me.
I was almost certain of it.
The realization left me equal parts awed and terrified. If she chose me—truly chose me, not because of prophecy or destiny but because she wanted the male I was—then I would spend the rest of my existence making sure she'd never regret that choice. As soon as this crisis was over, when the Vessel was recovered, and the Harrowed One had been driven back into the darkness, I would keep another promise.
I would cross to the farthest reaches of the universe if necessary. I would find the Sythari worlds. I would hunt down every priest, every noble, every sanctimonious bastard who had profited from the suffering of females like Naeris. Then I would dismantle their empire piece by piece—not in blind rage, though there would be plenty of that—but in justice.
