I wake up screaming.
It tears out of me before I’m even fully awake—raw and ugly, scraped up from the bottom of every night terror I’ve ever had.
Luna jerks awake with a little gasp, startled out of warmth. Pip tumbles off the bed. Alkek is upright in a blink, hand already searching for me in the dark, trying to pull me back by touch alone.
“Sol—” His voice is thick with sleep and fear. “Sol, hey—hey. You’re here.”
I’m shaking. My lungs won’t take a full breath.
Not here. Not now. Don’t bring it into this room.
“It’s nothing,” I lie, and it comes out too sharp. I try again, softer. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
Luna’s eyes are wide in the low light, red catching the gray like embers. She blinks hard, trying to understand why the world just screamed.
“Ma?” she whispers.
I force my hands to work. I pull her close, smooth her hair back, press my mouth to her forehead—trying to seal the crack.
“Bad dream,” I tell her. “Just a bad dream.”
Alkek’s palm stays on my back, anchoring me. He doesn’t ask what I saw. He just breathes with me until my heartbeat stops trying to climb out of my ribs.
Luna sniffles once, then settles against my chest, heavy and warm. Her fingers curl into my shirt, claiming me back from whatever tried to take me.
Don’t look at her ears. Don’t check her teeth. Just hold her.
Eventually her breathing evens out again. Alkek eases her down, tucks Pip back under her arm, and pulls the blanket up—tight and protective. He kisses Luna’s hair, then my shoulder.
“You want me to stay up?” he murmurs.
I swallow.
If you stay up, you’ll see it.
“No,” I whisper. “Go back to sleep. Please.”
He watches me for a beat longer than he should—reading the lie, choosing not to fight it. Then he lies back down, one hand still reaching for mine until sleep takes him again.
The room goes quiet, but it isn’t peaceful. I stare at the ceiling until my eyes sting, and I know I’m not sleeping again, so I slide out of bed and ease my weight onto the familiar floorboards, careful out of habit, like I still weigh seven hundred pounds—though Valicar’s been kind enough to keep the gravity light, so the wood only complains instead of snapping.
Downstairs, the tavern is dark. The hearth is dead. The air smells of ash and old ale and wood that’s been soaked in a thousand mornings.
Maro’s chair sits by the hearth, empty.
Don’t.
I go behind the bar instead.
I pour the first cup. It burns going down, and Phoenix swallows the warmth before it can even settle.
So I pour another. Then another.
I sip the last one slow, like that makes it something other than what it is.
It doesn’t.
The quiet crowds in. If I stay out here too long, I’ll start listening.
My ears twitch under the headband, hunting the signal. Valicar oscillates the bandwidth until there’s nothing left to catch—just static. Good. I sigh. I keep them hidden, even from her. The nanites keep sanding me smooth, and I’m so tired of it. I’m sorry I can’t tell you yet, Luna. I just want you to live a normal life.
I take the bottle with me and move toward the back—past the storeroom, past the shelves, to the little study we carved out of what used to be Maro’s “no-one-touch” space.
It’s barely a room. A table. A chair. A shelf of ledgers Alkek pretends he understands. A single candle stub.
And under the loose board by the table—
I pull it free.
A journal and ink.
I sit down, set the bottle beside the candle, and stare at the blank page until my breathing slows.
Do it. Before you lose your nerve.
I dip the pen.
I write her name first.
Luna—
The ink looks wrong in this light—too ordinary for what it means.
Fuck. You can do this, Sol.
Don’t make it pretty. Make it honest. She deserves the truth. All of it.
If you’re reading this, then I’ve been gone a long time—long enough for you to hate me properly. Long enough that I can’t pretend this is a “trip” anymore.
I love you. I loved you before I knew what kind of mother I’d be, and I love you now—even if all I left you is a journal and a shitty bloodline.
And I’m sorry.
I need you to believe me: I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you. I left because something old has its eyes on us now, and nothing is safe until it’s beaten. So I’m doing the only evil I can live with—I’m becoming the monster my father made, because it’s the only thing that can win.
That doesn’t make it fair, and it doesn’t make the years I’m stealing from you hurt any less. I know what it does to a kid when the person they trust most just… vanishes. I know what it turns into. I know what you’ll call me when you finally let yourself say it out loud.
And you won’t be wrong.
I’m a terrible person and a worse mother, but having you was the only good thing I ever did. You were the one hope I found in this wretched universe—the one thing that didn’t feel engineered, or cursed, or paid for in blood. I want you happy. I want you small and safe and bored in the best way. I wanted you to grow up mad about wet boots, confused about boys, and whether the stew tastes right—normal kid stuff.
Even after you read this, I want you to close this book, wipe your face, and go right back to living your life on Haven.
I know I’m circling the same damn points. So I’m gonna stop stalling and just say it. There’s a lot I have to tell you, and it’s not going to make much sense at first—but please, bear with me.
You and I… we aren’t human. Not the way the people around you are.
We’re Homo Immortalis—an offshoot of humanity, designed to rule the stars.
Something in our blood doesn’t let us die the way other people die. It heals wrong—and it gets hungry. You’re going to feel it someday, and when you do, I need you to hear me: it isn’t your fault. None of it is.
And when that day comes, when you start wondering if you should go looking for answers or chasing whatever’s calling from the dark—don’t. Not yet. Not for a long, long time. Haven’s shield isn’t just a sky to you. It’s a wall. It’s the only mercy your grandfather managed to put between you and everything that wants you.
So stay here. Stay under it. Stay where the universe can’t see you unless you let it.
I will come back. I don’t get to promise “soon,” so I won’t lie to you.
It might be decades. It might be centuries.
You’ll still be here. That’s the curse—and the mercy of being immortal.
Live. Laugh too loud. Fall in love with stupid little things and let them save you.
That’s all I’m asking.
Someday you’ll understand why I left… and why I’m begging you to stay on Haven. Why I’m begging you not to make another you. I know that sounds cruel. I know it sounds like I’m stealing something from you. But I’m not trying to hurt you—I’m trying to break the chain before it wraps around your throat.
But before any of it can make sense, you have to know the truth about me—who your Ma really is.
I’m not from Haven.
I’m from Earth.
My name is Sol Voss—and Julian Voss was my father. Your grandfather.
He’s the man who made Angel. Who made Haven. Who made Phoenix—the thing in our blood that you and I inherited. Phoenix has killed trillions of intelligent beings across the galaxy, and if you hate me for carrying it, I won’t blame you. I hate myself for it too. I hate him. I hate what he turned us into.
He loved old stories. He took their monsters and made them real—dragons, titans, names that sound like fate. The God’s Arsenal is what he’s been building, and we’re only one weapon inside it.
But we’re special in one way—and it’s a cruel kind of special. For now, only I can do what he needs.
I’m the only mind that can survive apotheosis—because of Phoenix. I can merge flesh and steel and still stay me, long enough to see beyond, into a higher plane of existence.
He was the most brilliant man who ever lived.
And the most dangerous.
Julian reached farther than any other human. He looked at an unfair universe—one without a god—and decided it needed one.
Dad means to make me that god.
Yeah—I know. That doesn’t make sense. Not the way you’ve lived your life, shit it barely makes sense to me.
Fuck—I’m rambling again and getting ahead of myself. I know I’m all over the place. There’s just so much to tell you, and I’m scared you’ll stop reading—maybe you already have. Maybe I’m stalling, because if I stop, I have to go upstairs and see you asleep and admit what I’m doing to you. But I’ll say it a hundred different ways if I have to: I’m so fucking sorry I am your mother. I really thought I’d be better than the cunt that gave birth to me. Even if I wasn’t… you have to know the whole story, no matter how clumsy my attempt to tell it is.
My story—what I did, what I helped build, why I went back to face it… and what I’ll turn into, if that’s the price of making sure you don’t become me.
The ink sets while the bottle runs dry. I write until my hand cramps and Phoenix starts roaring for food. There’s still so much to tell, but my time tonight is up.
Upstairs, the tavern stirs. Wood shifts. A soft groan in the walls. I sit there until the candle slumps and my eyes start to sting.
I wrap the journal, slide it under the loose board, and press it down until it lies flat.
After that, the days start wearing a groove into me. I work. I smile. I mother. I keep my hands busy so my head can’t get loud.
Then one morning—Alkek chopping vegetables for the day’s stew—I say it.
“I’m leaving soon.”
The knife stops.
Alkek doesn’t look up right away. He breathes slow through his nose. Here it is. Don’t blink.
“How long do we have?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Months. A year, if we get lucky.”
He sets the knife down.
Then he’s on me—arms tight, like if he holds hard enough the sky won’t get a grip.
“No,” he says into my hair. “Stay.”
I close my eyes.
Fuck. Don’t do this to me.
“There has to be another way,” he whispers. “We can talk to Garos. We can—”
“It’s not a Keeper problem,” I cut in. “Not a shield problem. Not even a Hive problem.”
That makes him go still.
I pull back just enough to look at him.
“The Elders are coming,” I say.
He shakes his head once, hard. “So we hide.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“We’re already hiding.”
“Then we hide better,” he snaps, and the anger breaks.
I swallow.
“They purge whole galaxies. There’s nowhere to run.”
His mouth opens. Closes.
“What’s left of my father needs me—the ghost in the machine,” I add, hating the words. “I’m the only piece that fits. He’s trying to stop gods.”
He drags a hand down his face. “But you said it could take them centuries.”
“And then what?” I ask softly.
His throat moves. No answer.
“She’s immortal,” I say. “Our daughter will still be here when this place is dust. When you’re gone. When everyone we love is a story someone tells wrong.”
He squeezes his eyes shut.
“You think I don’t know that?” he whispers.
“I think you’re trying not to.”
He opens his eyes again—wet and furious.
“I don’t care about the galaxy,” he says. “I care about her. I care about you.”
I nod once. I don’t pretend I’m better than that.
“I know,” I whisper. “Me too.”
“Then stay,” he says.
And that’s the knife in it.
I take a breath that hurts.
“If I stay,” I say, “we get a few good years. Maybe a lifetime for you.”
His face crumples.
“And she gets to watch the end anyway,” I finish. “Because she doesn’t get to die when everyone else does.”
He stares at me.
Then, quieter—like he hates himself for it—
“I’m selfish,” he says. “I’d let the stars burn out if it meant she stayed safe in my arms.”
My chest caves in. God. I love him.
“Be selfish,” I whisper. “Just… be selfish in the direction that keeps her alive in the long run.”
His hands shake on my shoulders.
“Sol,” he says, voice breaking. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to go,” I say. I want to stay until the universe forgets my name.
We stand there with vegetables drying on the board, like normal life is still something we can hold.
Then his shoulders sag.
“So what happens now?” he asks.
I swallow.
“We make the time we have count,” I say. “And when it’s time… you keep her here.”
His jaw tightens. “And you?”
I look at him.
“I go meet them,” I say. “Before they get to her.”
The argument doesn’t end clean. It just… runs out.
He nods once, slow—
because he knows I’m right.
Not long after, Luna decides she wants to “camp” in the common room.
Old Tessa calls it a phase. Hano declares it the Fort of Scarlet and drags half the blankets in the building down like he’s raising a flag.
Luna beams.
I let her.
We end up on the floor by the hearth—Alkek on one side, me on the other, Luna wedged between us with Pip tucked under her chin.
It’s cramped as hell, and my back is already complaining, but I lie there awake for hours because her weight against my ribs pins me to the world in the best way.
This is what people mean.
A few weeks later, Stormbreaker pings—one tight pulse through Valicar that hits my skull.
“Here,” Wolf says. “It’s down.”
I stare at the floor until it steadies me, then sit up.
Alkek’s already awake. He doesn’t ask—just watches my face, then brushes my hair back like it’s muscle memory.
We wait for the tavern to die down. Last lamp out. Last floorboard settled.
If Luna wakes, it’s “checking the locks.” Alkek just sets my boots by my feet.
Outside, the moons hang pale pink over Angel.
The pod hit hours earlier. The ground around it is torn and steaming.
Inside is my spare.
A copy of my first attempt—back when I tried to build a full-power suit heavy enough to stand beside Lion and not look like a child in a costume. I never got it there. The plates couldn’t keep up with what I am, and the systems couldn’t keep up with what he is.
Wolf told me to stop chasing armor and start trusting my own body—trust Phoenix, trust the healing, build around it instead.
So I abandoned the bulk and embraced nanites. Something that could move as fast as my regeneration.
In its chest: a squat fusion core, humming and stubborn.
It has a few decades of fuel if it stays on an emergency profile. I never upgraded it to antimatter the way I did Valicar—too volatile. If the core fails, I always knew I’d go up in a little supernova. Fusion is enough for her—safer than antimatter, and built to get her through a few bad years.
Long enough.
I bring it home in one go, hidden under a cloak that isn’t cloth at all. Valicar bends the dark around me and the world looks away. Phoenix makes the weight a joke. The distance turns short.
Dawn catches me at the barn with mud up my boots and my breath too even.
Alkek is already inside, lantern low, waiting.
Luna clocks the mud at breakfast anyway.
She squints at my boots. “Why you so muddy?”
My mouth opens. Lies line up.
“Checked the fence,” I say, too quick.
She watches me for a beat—longer than an eight-year-old should.
Then she shrugs, because kids decide trust is safer than truth.
“Okay,” she says, and goes back to picking crumbs off her bread.
Five weeks later, Alkek stops asking if I’m coming back to bed.
Sometimes he just shows up in the barn and sits on an overturned crate while I work. Other nights he comes in quiet with his sleeves rolled and does the only things he can do—small, human things that still matter.
He holds the lantern for me even though my eyes don’t need it. He shifts it when my shadow gets in the way. He hands me tools before I ask. He braces a plate while I bolt it down. He keeps a hose steady while I pressure-test seals, knuckles white, jaw locked like he can muscle the universe into behaving.
He never says this is for Luna.
He doesn’t have to.
Because this isn’t Valicar.
This is older. Meaner. Closer to my father’s Minotaur project than anything I ever wanted to admit I understood. Thick plates. Brutal servos. A design that doesn’t care if it hurts you—as long as it keeps you alive long enough to finish the job.
A normal person would die in it.
It wouldn’t be quick, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be clean. Their body would cook and tear and break in places it wasn’t meant to.
Only someone who can heal faster than the suit can destroy them can wear it.
Someday, she will.
When the frame’s finally solid, I crack the chest housing and start threading in a rough Valicar copy—no voice, no comfort, just the ugly little safeguards mine runs on loop. Frequency scrambles. Oscillations. A local shield that can sit under Haven’s planetary one and still do its job: keep her wrapped, keep her signal buried, keep the Hive from finding anything to grab if something in her starts reaching back.
For now she’s just a little girl.
For now.
In the spare time between bolts and seal checks, I try to give Alkek more.
I show him how to hold a plasma pistol without flinching. I teach him the ugly basics—distance, angles, what not to do if you want to keep your own hand attached. The tech is a wonder to him, but he learns fast. Faster than he should.
Then I offer him nanites.
Nothing that would turn him into a superhuman. Just quiet upgrades—faster healing, infection resistance, bones that don’t splinter so easy. It would buy him decades.
He listens. He learns the pistol.
He refuses the rest.
“No,” he says, steady as stone. “I’ll live like my father. And his father before him. I’ll protect my family the same way they did.”
The words land hard because I can’t call them stupid.
So I just nod, swallow the part of me that wants to beg him, and go back to the suit.
When it’s done, we cover it—old cloak first, then a tarp that smells like hay and rain—and shove it deep into the back corner of the barn where you don’t look unless you already know.
I make him meet my eyes when I say it.
“If she ever gets ears like mine,” I tell him, because the words matter, “you put her in it.”
His jaw tightens. “And then what?”
“And then you keep her here,” I say. “You keep it quiet. And if it gets that bad—the Keepers can help. Garos. Whoever keeps systems alive.”
Alkek’s face twists. “You trust ’em?”
“No,” I say. “I trust that they keep things running.”
That answer sits between us, bitter.
Then the weeks start stacking. The suit stays hidden. The lantern stays lit. And the days keep pretending they’re normal.
A few months pass, and the bottle stops feeling like a choice. I don’t wait for the bar to run dry—I have Wolf drop off more from my Stormbreaker reserve.
So much for semi-sobriety.
Luna notices because she lives close to me, and kids don’t miss patterns.
One evening she climbs onto a stool and leans in, sniffing.
“Ma,” she says, squinting hard, “your breath smells like the bottle.”
My laugh comes too fast.
“It’s medicine,” I tell her. “Grown-up medicine.”
She frowns—she knows I’m lying, but she doesn’t have the words yet.
Alkek doesn’t fight me. He just pours less. Waters it sometimes. Switches my cup when he can.
He doesn’t know the kind of alcohol I’ve got stocked—real off-world shit, Ruebrew and worse, the stuff that still bites even after Phoenix burns through it.
I let him try.
Then I drink from my flask when they aren’t looking.
And then I go to Angel one night, when my guilt drowns me deeper than the liquor, and the mission to Haven won’t stop living in my nightmares.
I need to see what I’m leaving her under.
I slip on Valicar’s cloak and move through Keeper space—radios clicking, boots on steel, rifles ready for anything that doesn’t belong.
Inside Angel’s ribs, the corridors are cold and old. Burn marks. Plates stamped with Voss, a signature carved into bone.
I find what I came for—the control spine. The systems that hold Haven’s planetary shield steady.
And under it—
The truth I already knew… and still needed to see.
Dragon wasn’t the last hope. Not for Haven.
The old core is right here in Angel—burning clean and stable. The same Voss-built heart he sent out centuries ago, back when his tech was ambitious, imperfect, and he was still pretending he was just a man.
The readouts don’t say failing.
They say stable.
So Jericho didn’t need to “deliver” anything.
Did that make my journey pointless?
My hand touches the panel, and memory sparks.
Jericho left Earth in 2468 with “humanity’s last fusion core” strapped to its spine—Haven’s so-called last hope. And then I woke up in 2518 and started turning into a monster one bad day at a time. By 2527, I was ripped away from Jericho and everything I’d come to know—stolen onto the galactic stage to distract them for my father. To fight a war that had nothing to do with Haven and everything to do with Phoenix.
The last century barely felt real. Out there, time turns elastic—cryo on Jericho, a little time dilation from warping space instead of crawling at light speed, and then whole years missing when I’d black out with the bottle on the Citadel, on Stormbreaker, on Paradise—while the Hive and Lion fought and I was nothing but a dinner bell.
And when I wasn’t bait, I was rotting in luxury while the Republic hardened into an Imperium—old politics collapsing just because I existed. I drank to make immortality move. To blur what I helped do.
Somewhere in that mess I became a saint and a hero anyway—because Lion and Young needed a symbol to build their religion around, so when the government collapsed, something would still be standing. Something loyal to us.
Now it’s 2577—nearly a decade on Haven, a life I let myself believe in—and it’s ending. Dad fixed the heart sometime in the last fifty years, or it was always fine and the “last hope” story was just another leash. Either way—
Haven doesn’t need me.
It never did.
The shield can coast for millennia—quiet, steady, self-correcting.
The Keepers maintain it anyway. They’ll keep it running long after I’m gone.
I don’t touch a thing.
I just go home.
When I get back, I’m shaken in a way I don’t show.
Luna catches me staring at the moons too long and says, casual as breath, “They’re just moons, Ma.”
“Yeah,” I answer, and it doesn’t fix anything.
After Angel, I start taking Luna back to the river more.
She’s older now—organized about it. Stones in neat rows. Rules. Powers. Laws she invents as if the world is supposed to listen.
Nyla argues with her until it turns into giggling, and they drop to their knees in the mud because it’s the funniest place to be alive.
Luna swims farther too. She shows off—every kick a performance, every breath a dare.
“Watch, Ma—watch this one!”
So I wade in.
Cold bites, and for a second I want to flinch back out of it—out of everything.
Then she splashes me on purpose and laughs with her whole body.
And I laugh back.
It hits me so clean I swallow river water and cough, and Luna howls about it all the way home, telling Alkek I nearly drowned.
That night, I don’t drink until she’s asleep.
Trying. That’s what I call it.
Alkek changes next.
He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t have to. He just starts acting like I’m already gone.
He stays closer to Luna. He’s the one who ties her shoes. The one who makes her wash her hands. The one who walks her back from the river even when she throws a fit about being “big.”
At night the house gets checked—shutters, latch, the back door. I hear him sharpening Maro’s old axe, even though I put a pistol in his hands that could drop a Draxsio.
And “Little Scarlet” comes out of his mouth softer now. Like he’s trying not to scare the world into noticing her.
Sometimes I catch him in her doorway, watching her sleep—memorizing her, afraid that if he blinks the sky will take her too.
I start warning her the same way I tell her not to run barefoot in the mud.
“If someone says there’s a ship and they wanna show you the stars,” I say, “you come get Da.”
Luna grins. “What if I wanna see?”
“Then you can see ’em from right here,” I tell her. “Because anybody offering you the sky is trying to steal something. Your rocks. Your doll. Your attitude.”
Luna snorts. “My attitude’s mine.”
“Exactly,” I say, and tap her nose. “And I’m not sharing.”
The journal changes too as I rush to finish it—countless nights, hundreds of pages.
I write until my hand does more than cramp, until the candle gutters and blood slicks the tenth pen. I write until I hate myself for how much I want her to forgive me for a thing I haven’t done yet.
One evening I’m talking to Hano about flour—prices, weights, the stupid details that keep a place alive—when Luna climbs into my lap like I’m furniture that belongs to her.
She knocks her head against my shoulder once, sighs, and she’s out.
I go still, afraid to breathe wrong and wake her.
Alkek walks by, sees it, and doesn’t say a word.
He just drapes a blanket over both of us like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
My throat closes on air.
This is what I’m leaving.
After a while my legs start to numb, so I lift her—careful, slow—and carry her upstairs. Her room smells like old soap and sun-warmed quilts. She’s got her own bed, bright blanket she insisted on, but she ends up in ours more nights than not.
I lay her down anyway. I tuck Pip back under her arm. I pull the quilt up to her chest.
She doesn’t wake.
I stand there too long, listening to her breathe.
Then I tuck the blanket under her chin and kiss her forehead.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Luna’s eyes squint open. “You’re mushy.”
“Yeah.” My mouth twitches. “Listen. I might have to take a trip soon.”
“A trip?” She sits up, sudden and curious, sleepiness forgotten. “To the capital?”
“Farther than that.”
“Why?”
I shrug, like it’s boring.
“Grown-up stuff,” I say. “Fixing things I’ve needed to fix for a long time.”
Luna blinks hard, waking up too fast. “When you comin’ back?”
I keep my voice steady.
“As soon as I can.”
Her face tightens. “Can I come?”
“No.” Too sharp. I pull it back before it hurts her. “No, baby. You stay here. You stay with Da.”
Luna studies me like she’s trying to catch the lie by staring at it long enough.
“You won’t get lost, will you?” she asks.
Something in my chest twists.
“I don’t get lost,” I say softly. Then I correct myself, because she deserves at least one real thing. “And even if I did…”
I brush her hair back and kiss her forehead again.
“I’ll find you,” I whisper. “One way or another.”
Her mouth quirks, half-giggle, half-sigh—like she thinks I’m being dramatic on purpose.
“Okay,” she murmurs, settling down again. “Goodnight, Ma. I love you.”
“Goodnight, Little Scarlet.” My throat tightens. “I’ll love you forever.”
She’s smiling when her eyes close.
She doesn’t hear the way my voice breaks on the last word.
And she doesn’t understand yet why I said it like that.
But she will.
I find Alkek in the common room, sitting in the dark with a mug he isn’t drinking.
“It’s tonight,” I say.
His throat bobs. “Why?” It comes out shaky. “Why tonight? Don’t we still have time?”
“We have time,” I say, and my face betrays me—hot, wet, already falling apart. I press my palm to my mouth like I can hold it in. “I just—” I shake my head. “I can’t keep doing this to myself.”
His jaw tightens. “You’re not gonna tell her goodbye… you can’t do that, Sol. You can’t leave like that.”
I laugh once and it breaks into a sob. I wipe my cheeks fast, furious at the fact I’m crying at all.
“I have to,” I whisper. “Because if I face her—if I hear ‘Ma’ one more time—I’ll stay.”
“Sol—”
“For fuck’s sake,” I breathe. “If I don’t go now, we all die. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not this century. But it’s coming.” My voice drops. “And every day I’m here, I get softer. I get weaker. I start believing the lie that we’re safe.”
My hand goes to the flask. I yank it out, tip it back, and swallow hard.
The burn lays a line down my throat. It gives me something sharp to hold.
I wipe my eyes again, slower. “I told her I was leaving. Just not when. That will have to do.”
“Tonight,” I say again, scraping up what little resolve I’ve got left.
That lands. He flinches.
I pull the journal from under my shirt—cloth-wrapped, warm from my body—and press it into his hands.
He holds it, careful. Too careful.
“When she’s old enough,” I say, “give her this.”
His voice goes rough. “Old enough for what?”
“The truth.”
He swallows hard. “She’ll hate you.”
“I know,” I breathe. “But she’ll be alive.”
For a second neither of us moves.
Then he steps in and grabs me—hard, desperate. His hands shake against my back.
“I love you, Alkek,” I say.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes wet and furious at the sky. “Don’t say it like this is the end.”
I don’t answer.
I just kiss him.
When I break away, his forehead rests against mine for one last breath.
“I love you, Sol,” he whispers. “I’ll miss you.”
I bite down so hard I taste copper.
“I’ll miss you too,” I say. “I’ll try to come back. But it could take decades. It could take centuries.”
His eyes shut for a second.
“So this is really it,” he says.
I nod once, “You made my life worth living,” I manage. “These were the best years of my—”
My voice cracks. I swallow the rest, because the rest is too big to carry out loud.
Valicar pings and my bones know what it means.
My stomach drops.
Alkek feels it in the way I still.
“Now,” he says.
“Now.”
We don’t make it a scene.
He walks me to the edge of the yard.
One step past the fence line and the night opens up—fields, cold air, Angel’s ribs cutting the horizon.
The shuttle comes down quiet—cloak on. No lights. Just a blank patch of night settling into our field.
The ramp lowers.
Alkek doesn’t follow me into the dark. He stops where the light from the inn can still touch him.
The journal is pressed to his chest.
“You should tell her—” he starts, then stops, because there’s nothing he can say that won’t break.
“I know,” I whisper.
I turn before I can change my mind.
Up the ramp. Into metal air. Into the hum that always meant war.
As the hatch seals, I catch one last slice of him through the narrowing gap—standing in our yard like a man holding a world together.
Then it’s gone.
The shuttle lifts.
Haven shrinks beneath me—roofs, fields, the tavern I never called home until it was too late.
I press my forehead to the cold metal and whisper it anyway, like the sky can still hear me.
“Goodnight, Little Scarlet.”
Stormbreaker carries me back into the dark.
Is Sol a bad Mom?
