“My Elena,” he says softly. “I know it makes you happy to use your skills. And you bring invention to Xytheos. That’s something we have not had in a long time. We left everything to the Concord Stone, long ago. We must be cautious with anything new.”
“I want to see it,” I say. “I can’t wait.”
Rythar straightens and picks up a piece of protein. The corner of his mouth lifts again. “Food first. There is time.”
After breakfast, he shows me the room. It’s larger than the makeshift spaces I worked in on New Terra, filled with work surfaces and lined with shelves scattered with half-assembled circuits, raw mineral cores, and very finely calibrated tools, among other supplies. He’s had my medical tinkering supplies moved down here, too, relocated from our quarters.
He leaves me with a kiss and my new distractions. I lose myself there for hours, taking things apart just to see how they were made. The door is always guarded, and the guards carefully avoid looking inside the room.
Rythar returns for meals. He doesn’t ask what I’ve built. He only watches. At night, he brings me to bed. Whatever waits outside our quarters doesn’t follow him there. He leaves it waiting. He takes his time exploring our physical relationship, like he’s building the new version of us—the version that moves as one.
This is what he wants now. Slow undressing. Lingering touches. Careful attention to what works and what doesn’t. Each night follows a quiet rhythm. Skin against skin. The low hum of connection settling deeper without the Stone's help. The world narrows to breath and heat and the familiar press of him anchoring me in place. Sometimes he shifts the angle, sometimes he stills me with a hand or a look, until we are perfectly aligned. It’s about staying here, together, while something unspoken gathers beyond the walls.
When it ends, it never ends. We stay tangled, skin slick, breath slowing. He doesn’t pull away afterwards. His weight remains my anchor until the tension in my body eases and my thoughts finally loosen their grip.
Outside, the fortress stays restless.
A few days later, I am on the rooftop testing a solar-powered device when a patrol returns at a dead run. Two warriors flank a third who’s barely upright, one arm across each of their shoulders, legs dragging, head lolling. They cut straight through the main gate.
The fallen warrior is fit and muscular, even by Xythean standards, but he’s limp, breathing in ragged, wet bursts. His skin has gone sickly gray, striped with bands of purple-black that crawl up from a bite on the inside of his thigh. I don’t need a medscan to know what it is. Serpent-panther bite. The venom has almost killed him.
From the rooftop with me, Drenz barks an order at the warriors who carried him in.
I bolt for my medkit.
"Elena." Drenz is behind me even as I race for the medkit. "Do not do what I think you're about to do."
"He's dying, Drenz," I say as I grab my medkit. I’ll never outrun Drenz.
"I can see that he's dying.” Drenz blocks my path.
"Then move." He doesn't move. He also doesn't grab me as I dart around him, which is what Rythar would have done. Instead, he keeps pace beside me until we reach the fallen warrior.
I drop to my knees beside the warrior and crack open the medkit.
Drenz crouches across from me. He’s angled to block the view of anyone outside the courtyard. "Rythar gave you specific orders," Drenz says, low enough that only I can hear.
"Rythar isn't here."
"That is why I'm reminding you of his orders," Drenz says. The words are loaded.
I shove the antivenom into the warrior's thigh and follow it with cellular repair.
Drenz watches my hands, but he doesn't try to stop them.
The bite is already necrotic, veins black and pulsing, the tissue around it dead. The warrior’s eyes are rolled back. His chest is still moving. Barely.
The venom is strong, but my formula works. Not the one I built for Rythar—that one rode on a biome lord’s engineered redundancies. This is the general batch I’ve been stabilizing in the engineering room for days. I built it for common Xythean warriors. And, with Xythean analytics, I made some carefulimprovements to my New Terran cellular repair formula. Now I find out if it works.
It works almost too well. Slowly, the purple-black bands fade, then recede. The fallen warrior’s breathing steadies. His pulse returns to something closer to normal. After a few minutes, he’s not just alive—he’s conscious. He’s confused, but he’s alive. I was hoping I could get him inside before he healed. Now everyone will have seen.
I wipe my hands on my tunic and stand up. Drenz stands with me.
Despite Drenz’s large body blocking the view, the warriors are staring at me like I just walked through a wall.
The med-tech's hands are shaking. "He should be dead," he whispers.
Drenz’s expression is wiped clean, but his eyes flick from the medic to me. "You are aware," Drenz says to me, "that I am going to have to explain this to Rythar."
