The hallway echoed with each step. The only real sound besides the storm of thoughts looping through my head. Circling. It had been 2 weeks since they found Seraphina—two weeks of sitting by her bed.

  Wishing for her to wake up. To tell her I had made a mistake.

  This would make the 15th day. I was only away from her side half the time because of the constant meetings. It seemed that I had ignored the issues facing the planet for as long as I could. Sweeping changes had been announced days ago, as the planet settled into an uneasy readiness..

  The rebel leader Rueben might have escaped, but it cost him. Sadly, it cost the people of Drakara more. Each loss of life was another reminder of my failure as their leader. Jax had arranged a meeting with some of the captured rebel faction leaders. It seemed they weren't as sold on the idea of rebelling as they had been.

  I sighed as Jax stepped in front of me again. Hoping that this time it wouldn’t end up being another argument. I heard Mara move behind me. Getting ready to stop us if needed.

  “Alex,” Jax said. His voice still held a hard edge, It seemed today wasnt going to be any better than the previous day. He still held me responsible for Zara’s injury. And I couldn’t blame him. I felt just as guilty that she was still recovering, as he was angry.

  I turned, nodding slightly. “Jax. What can I do for you today?”

  He folded his arms. “You could start by not assuming every meeting is a fight.”

  Mara shifted behind me, tense. I felt sorry for her. This wasn’t meant to be her job. Guarding the Baron. I kept my voice level as I replied. “You’ve made it clear where you stand.”

  Jax gave a bitter smile. “Yeah, and you’ve made it clear what matters to you. But I came here because this isn't about you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he held a small datapad up between us. “This is.”

  I grabbed it. Lines of encrypted transmissions scrolled across the screen. Coordinates. Coded signatures. One was flagged in red.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked, scanning it.

  “We picked up encrypted chatter near the outer ridges,” Jax said grimly. “Theon’s techs cracked it after an all-night grind. What they found… isn’t local. Guess whose code protocols these match?”

  “Reuben’s?”

  “Not just Reuben's. Someone else has been feeding them intel—outside the system.”

  I looked up sharply. “Kragthar?”

  Jax shook his head. “No. At least, not directly. We don’t know who. Not yet. But the transmissions weren’t local. They were routed through a relay hidden in the debris fields off orbit. Military-grade.”

  I felt my chest tighten. “So the rebellion isn’t just homegrown.”

  “No.” Jax’s eyes narrowed. “Which means someone wanted this to blow up. Someone wanted to fracture Drakara from the inside while the Kragthar hovered at our doorstep.”

  “And the rebels?” I asked, my throat dry.

  Jax exhaled. “The ones we captured don’t know. Or they’re good liars. But not all of them are loyal to Reuben’s cause anymore. Some of them are scared. Confused. And a few might be willing to listen.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  My voice was low. “So what—you want me to play diplomat now?”

  Jax didn’t flinch. “No. I will. You’ve burned enough bridges.”

  I stiffened. “Careful.”

  He stepped closer. “Or what? You’ll throw me into a cell like you did to the last rebel? You want to rule from the ashes, Alex? Go ahead. But don’t expect me to sweep up after you.”

  Silence pulsed between us. The old friendship, the camaraderie—it was still there, somewhere, buried under the rubble of betrayal and blood. But neither of us knew how to reach it.

  After a long beat, Jax continued, quieter now. “I will speak with the rebel leaders in custody this evening. If they believe someone else was pulling their strings, we might have a shot at stopping another uprising. But they won’t talk to you.”

  I nodded slowly. “You think I don’t want to fix this, Jax?”

  “I think you want to fix her,” he said, eyes dark. “And maybe everything else is just noise to you right now. But Drakara can’t survive on obsession.”

  That one hit too close. I flinched. He saw it.

  “I’ll do the mission,” he said after a pause. “Negotiate. Try to buy us time. But if I find out who’s behind the transmissions—”

  “You’ll come to me first,” I said.

  Jax gave me a look. “That depends. Will you listen this time?”

  I didn’t have an answer. Letting out the breath I had been holding, I nodded after a beat. Biting my tongue to stop the snark reply on my tongue's tip. “OK. Thank you, Jax.”

  I turned and walked down the corridor. Each step echoed as I watched Jax turn and walk away a few seconds later. I stopped before a door, letting out a shaky breath before hitting the button. The medbay door hissed open, and a sterile chill prickled at my skin.

  “Stay out here, Mara,” I said before entering the room.

  Seraphina lay motionless beneath a tangle of wires and monitors, her face pale against the stark white sheets. The machines hummed their ceaseless dirge, each beep a reminder that time was slipping through my fingers. I sank into the chair beside her bed, the cold metal biting through my coat.

  For a long moment, I said nothing. My eyes traced the rise and fall of her chest, the faint flutter of her lashes—proof she was still tethered to this world, even if barely. When I finally spoke, my voice cracked like dry earth.

  “You’d hate this,” I murmured, fingers brushing the edge of her blanket but never daring to touch her hand. “All these machines. All this noise. You’d tell me to stop hovering. To govern something.”

  A hollow laugh escaped me, swallowed by the room’s silence. My thumb grazed the scar on my palm—a relic from the caverns—as the memory of our first meeting surged unbidden.

  The Great Hall. Her emerald eyes locked onto mine, unreadable and sharp. The way she’d stood like a statue, every breath measured, as the Emperor declared our fate. And then, later, my reckless, desperate kiss, stolen in the gardens. Her lips were soft and still, frozen in shock. I told myself it was a political maneuver to unsettle her. But the truth had burned hotter: I’d wanted to shatter the distance between us, if only for a second.

  “I thought I could outrun it,” I whispered, leaning forward, elbows digging into my knees. “Duty. Titles. You. But every time I tried to pull away, you… You stayed. Even when I treated you like another problem to solve. Even when I—” My throat tightened. The monitors beeped faster, as if her heart could hear me.

  I closed my eyes. Lina’s face flickered in the dark—her small hand clutching the teddy bear, the crates falling, the blood, the weight of failure that had dogged me ever since.

  “I pushed you away because I couldn’t bear to lose someone else,” I rasped. “I thought if I didn’t care, it wouldn’t hurt when—” My voice broke. The confession hung raw in the air. “But it’s too late. You crawled under my skin, Sera. And now I’m terrified. Terrified you’ll wake up and see what I am. A fraud. A boy playing at being a leader, too broken to protect anyone. Too afraid to admit I never really knew how.”

  I reached for her hand, my calloused fingers trembling as they brushed hers. Her skin was warm. Alive.

  “You called me ‘real’ once,” I said, the words barely audible. “I didn’t understand it then. But I think… I think you saw the parts I kept buried. The parts that ached. And I hated you for it. Hated how you made me want to…” I swallowed hard. “To hope.”

  The machines droned on. Somewhere down the hall, a medic’s footsteps faded.

  I stood abruptly, the chair screeching against the floor. I couldn’t look at her—not with everything I’d said bleeding between us—not when the truth felt like a blade twisting in my ribs.

  “I love you,” I whispered to the stillness. “And I’m sorry.”

  I turned, boots heavy as I strode toward the door. I didn’t see her fingers twitch against the sheet. Didn’t see the faint curve of her lips—a ghost of a smile, fleeting as a breath—before the monitors settled back into their numb, steady rhythm.