"Override denied. You are not an authorized user."
The voice stays smooth, flat, and terrible in its calm each time. It shows no judgment, no irritation. It is a ship that knows I am here, knows exactly how much power I have, and repeats its one line with the patience of something that has locked doors for a thousand years and has never been impressed by anyone on the wrong side of them.
I slap my calloused palm against the panel hard enough to sting."Override denied."
"I heard you thefirst time," I snarl.
I lean my forehead on the obsidian beside the panel. I breathe out through my teeth. The ship obeys him. The ship obeys himcompletely.I stand in a body that has no authority here, with hands that have no authority here, saying words that carry no authority here, and the only voice in the whole of this hull that the ship answers to is his. He has sealed me in a room that reserves manual override authority exclusively for him.
Of course.
Pushing off the wall, I watch the panel sink back as if embarrassed to have hosted me. The glyphs fade. The amber goes dark. The wall is smooth and polished and seamless again, as though the whole humiliating exchange simply evaporated.
And then, underneath the last fading hiss of the panel, the sealed door across the ward begins to open.
I freeze, rooted to the floor of the room.
He fills the threshold. He is exactly as massive as I remember and somehow worse in private, in this smaller space, where there is nowhere for the scale of him to dissipate. The light in the ward shifts around him, amber gold pulling low along his plating, violet threading along the mechanical veins threading through tissue at his throat and wrists. His hair is still damp. His eyes find mine before he has taken a single step inside, and the red beneath is already bright, already warmer than it was on the dais, as if whatever thread connects us pulled him back on its own.
I take a step back. He takes a step forward.
"Stay where you are." The command cracks, brittle enough to shatter. I clear my throat, dragging a deeper resonance up from my lungs. "Stay right where you are."
He does no such thing.
He walks into the ward, careful, and the door closes behind him with the same mechanical finality, sealing us both inside. Every line of him reads as patience. The hunting gait from thecore chamber is gone. This is something else. Something settled, deliberate. He has come here on purpose, and he is going to take his time doing whatever it is he came to do.
"I said stay—" I start, but my warning fractures as I back up another step. He matches my retreat effortlessly, allowing me no space as his massive frame bears down on me.
"You have not entered the reclamation alcove," he rumbles.
His voice arrives in my own language through whatever translator tucked along his throat, smooth and clean, with the deeper rasp beneath it pressing against the column of my chest the way only his voice does. He is close enough now that his plating radiates a palpable heat. I step back again. He steps forward again. My shoulder blades hit the wall before I account for it, and I realize, too late, that he has been herding me.
"Oh, that's cute," I snap, because the only thing I have left is my mouth. "Is this your thing? You shepherd a girl into a corner and call it a conversation?"
"You have not entered the reclamation alcove," he repeats, dropping his tone into a low, tectonic vibration. When I fire back with a clipped, "Well spotted," he ignores the sarcasm entirely. "You have not put on the clothing."
"Also well spotted." I bare my teeth at him. "Took you that long to figure out?"
He stops. Close. Very close. Close enough that the half-collar at his throat nearly brushes the top of my head, and I have to tip my chin up to keep looking at his face. He has put a hand flat on the wall beside my head, bracketing me in. His other hand rests at his hip, knuckles inward, a posture of deliberate restraint that sets every instinct in me on edge. The red in his eyes burns steadily. The hybrid vascular latticework in his throat patters once, then twice, responding to an invisible link I feel intensely, fluttering under the mark.
I am furious and terrified. Instinct demands I look away, yet a stronger force keeps my gaze thoroughly locked.
If he has decided I am a creature worth watching, he is going to be watched back. That is the only card I have to play, and I play it, and I let him see every inch of my face as I hold my eyes on his.
Something moves along the ridge of his jaw. A small tightening defies my reading, though the red tinge in his eyes picks up a shade, betraying his amusement. He is enjoying this. Every second of it.
"You came all the way down here," I murmur venomously, "to check on whether I ran your bath? Is that what a Reaper does with his day?"
"I came." He’s quieter now, quieter than anything he has said to me, "to see whether the mark had settled."
My breath falters.
I clamp down on it. I keep my chin up. I keep my arms crossed, I realize dimly, though I have already dropped my hands to my sides without noticing. Both of us know he felt the catch. Both of us know it. The red beneath his eyes warms a fraction.
"And has it," I challenge, holding the venom steadfast, "Reaper."
"Yes."