"I love you, Drae," I declare softly, the profound truth of it grounding me.
"And I love you," he vows, pulling me into a fierce, tight embrace. "You are the Will ofVirex Prime. And you are mine." I feel the slight, lingering ache in his arms and hands from halting the gravity-mace strike, the fierce protectiveness that flares whenever I move, and a deep, simmering affection that makes my heart skip a beat.
I melt into him, my head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. We stay like that for a long time, two souls drifting in a sanctuary of our own making. The repairs will take time. The ship still has scars, and so do we. But as the nebula shimmers outside the glass, I know we have everything we need to build something new from the wreckage of the old world.
"Let's go say goodbye to my ship." I pull back with a grin. "TheHarrowhas waited long enough."
Draevik stands, offering me his large, rough hand with a flourish. "As the navigator commands."
The inner doors of the primary hangar bay cycle open with a heavy, grinding groan that I can feel through my boots. Standing on the observation deck, I look down at theHarrowresting in the primary docking cradle. We brought her in right before the jump, but this is my first time seeing her secured in the cavernous space. She looks small—tiny, really—against the obsidian scale of this Reaper vessel. Her hull is scorched, a patchwork of mismatched alloy plates and weld-scars that tell the story of every narrow escape I ever clawed through.
Draevik stands behind me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders. His warmth radiates constantly now, acting as a shield that holds the chill of the void at bay. Through the mark inmy chest, I feel his pride. It’s a thick, heady sensation that makes my own heart thud with a fierce, pulse-pounding intensity.
"She’s home," I declare softly, letting it echo in the vast bay.
"Like the captain, she carries the scars and instincts of a survivor." Draevik’s voice rumbles in a deep, hammering rhythm against the back.
I embrace this finality. Taking the lift down to the hangar floor, my footsteps ring out on the deck plates with a new authority. As I approach my old ship, I realize I’m walking differently. My shoulders are squared, my stride purposeful. The jittery, frantic energy of a scavenger looking over her shoulder has evaporated.
My palm presses flat against theHarrow’s airlock. The metal is cold, smelling of stale recycled air and the faint, bitter tang of hydraulic fluid. For years, this ship was my entire universe. It was my shield, my home, and my only friend. But as my eyes follow her now, I only identify a shell.
"Everything inside is exactly as you left it." Draevik meets me near the ramp’s foundation.
I cycle the airlock and step inside. The interior is cramped. I have to duck my head to avoid the overhead wiring—wiring I spliced myself during a solar flare in the Calyx Reach. The scent hits me—old grease, dried protein rations, and the lingering ghost of my own sweat. It’s the smell of my old life.
I walk to the pilot’s seat and run my hand over the worn leather. The controls are analog, clunky, and laggy. I ponder aboutVirex Prime’s bridge, where the ship’s logic flows through my mind like a river. My senses have sharpened; my mind handles data with a clarity that borders on the divine.
"I can't go back to this." The realization lands in my chest like a fist. It strikes from theHarrow—she has always been broken, and I loved her for it. Instead, I live no longer as the woman who fits inside this cockpit. My hands know the shape of a Reaperconsole now. My nervous system processes data at a speed that would fry every circuit on this bridge. The girl who sat in this chair and counted debt notices has vanished, leaving only a new, sharpened thing in that wake.
Draevik remains in the doorway, his massive frame blocking out the light from the hangar. He remains perfectly still, yet his focus snaps to me in an instant. "The choice is yours, Nyra. If you wish to take her and disappear into the Fringe, I will support that path."
I turn to him, a sharp, amused laugh escaping my lips. "I thought freedom was having enough fuel to reach the next jump gate. I see now that was a clever cage."
Staring at my calloused hands, still stained by the work of a scavenger, I feel the golden energy of the Bond of Aegis pulsing beneath the skin. I now claim rule overVirex Prime. I’ve outrun the debt collectors and shredded every last trade protocol.
"I belong here," I insist with a fierce, melodic edge. "I belong with a man who sees me as an equal."
Instead of the cold, hollow fear that usually accompanies a loss of identity, a surge of raw power erupts from my chest. Leaning over the main console, I effortlessly dive into the deep-net com-link. WithVirex Prime's processing power backing me, Orun Station's firewalls are paper-thin. I bypass the encryption protecting the sketchy loan shark—the 'bad man' who spent four years taking bites out of my life. In three keystrokes, I don't just erase my debt; I financially annihilate him. I liquidate his entire criminal enterprise and anonymously distribute his credits across the Fringe. He’ll never be a threat to me or anyone else again.
I feel reborn. I’ve dismantled my past and outrun the debt collectors, shredding every last trade protocol.
"You are no longer what you were," Draevik murmurs, thick with something I have never heard from him before—an awethat exists outside war. "You are the Will ofVirex Prime. The galaxy has no cage that can hold you now."
I almost laugh, because the title sounds ridiculous—grandiose and ancient and nothing like the girl who used to steal ration tokens on Halvek Four. But the mark patterns warm, and the ship emits a deep, resonant recognition tone through the deck. I register that the title carries no requirement to resemble me; it requires alignment. It aligns. The bond aligns: strained, exact, and valid.
"I'm ready," I announce. "I don't know what the Will of a Reaper warship is supposed to do with her day, but I'm ready to find out."
I lean into him, my forehead resting against his chest. TheHarrowsits silent behind me, a museum piece of a life I have surpassed. This version of me—the one with the golden fire in her veins—commands the shadows.
"We need to strip her before we scuttle her." I pull back with a spark of mischief in my eyes. "TheHarrowhas a custom nav-core, dual data cores, a modified hyperdrive, and three mounted rail-guns I spent two years paying off. I'm not leaving them for the void. Finders keepers."
Draevik bellows a laugh, the sound echoing through the hangar like thunder. "A scavenger's heart, even in the skin of a goddess. You would take the teeth from a dragon to sharpen your own."
He is building a world around me, incorporating every part of who I am. We spend the next several hours working together. It’s a different kind of labor than the frantic repairs of the past few days. This is intentional. We move through theHarrowwith surgical precision, pulling the data cores, stripping the hyperdrive, and dismantling the weapons array I spent years perfecting. Draevik handles the heavy structural componentswith a grace that still fascinates me, his violet light illuminating the dark corners of the hold.
Every time our hands brush, the bond flares. I peer into flashes of his thoughts—tactical formations, the scent of old imperial gardens, and a deep, marrow-deep satisfaction at my presence.
When the last of the salvage is moved toVirex Prime's storage, we stand together by the hangar’s atmospheric seal. I hold the remote detonator—the one that will scuttle theHarrow's remains after we vent her into the void. It feels right to let the galaxy have the scraps.