Once she realized she was on her own ship again, her body loosened with relief, but some needs could not wait. She slipped carefully from the bed, doing everything she could not to wake him, and made her way to the bathroom. When she returned, a glass of water was already waiting on the nightstand, courtesy ofKhar. The taste told her it was not just water but a mineral-rich electrolyte blend, the one she usually drank when her body had been pushed past its limits.
How thoughtful of Khar to remember even this. Lily smiled to herself at the gesture, so perfectly in line with the Divani instinct for foresight.
She nestled back against his enormous frame, and Khar immediately drew her in. His sleep-rough voice wrapped around her senses like a sedative balm.
“Sleep, Lily. We have time for everything.”
So she did. And this time, she even dared to dream.
When she woke again, Khar was not beside her, but he appeared in the doorway the moment she shifted. Fresh from a shower, gleaming with health. Lily, who was certain she looked far less presentable, briefly considered throwing a pillow at him. Instead, she tossed the blanket aside. His smile widened and he moved with feline ease, dropping onto the bed next to her.
For a long moment they simply looked at each other, committing every detail of the other’s face to memory. Lily felt impossibly happy, finally whole, finally with him. But as the seconds stretched, another awareness crept in. Horos. What he had done.
Then tears rose, hot and sudden.
Khar reacted instantly and pulled her into his arms.
“Lily. You’re safe. It’s over. Let it out. Let it hurt. But you’re here, and you are not alone.”
Lily had no idea how to tell Khar what had happened. He had sacrificed everything for her, if what Horos said was even true, yet she was no longer the same girl she had been when she was taken. What if all of Khar’s sacrifices had been for nothing, and there was nothing she could do to make it right? What if this changed everything between them? And why had Khar done it in the first place? The weight of it pressed on her like a stone.
So Lily cried and cried. When she finally calmed again (for what felt like the hundredth time in the past hours), she looked up at Khar with red eyes and a swollen face. He cupped her cheek and handed her a soft cloth. Lily blew her nose loudly and felt like the least attractive woman in existence. After a long, contemplative silence, Khar finally spoke.
“Oh, Lily. You always give me the most impossible dilemmas. I cannot decide whether I should comfort you first and then take you to bed, or take you to bed so thoroughly that you forget everything, and then comfort you afterward just to be safe.”
Lily could not form a single word, too stunned to react, but it seemed Khar had not been waiting for an answer.
“No,” he decided, voice firm. “First, you get better.”
He pressed his forehead to hers, skin to skin, with just a hint of rough horn brushing her. His luminescent eyes filled her vision, but his voice was soft and almost reverent.
“Come. Eat something with me,” he asked.
At that exact moment her stomach growled in betrayal, but she knew she could not eat until she said what weighed on her heart.
“Khar… close your eyes. I am going blind.”
Khar let out a low chuckle and closed his eyes, but he did not move away. Lily drew a deep breath and forced herself to begin. It was easier this way, without his gaze on her, though his nearness still wrapped around her like a protective shield.
“I have to tell you something.”
Khar did not speak. He only made a quiet sound, a gentle hum that told her he was listening.
“When Horos stepped onto Vitro… I already sensed something was wrong. He said we were going to Vegrun, but when I tried to initiate a call to Vegrun, he… he made a sound. I have never heard anything like it. It felt like he tore me apart with nothing but soundwaves. I… could not defend myself. I fell, and it waslike having a seizure. I just shook. And Horos… he cuffed me and locked me inside Suite B.”
She felt Khar go rigid at Horos’s name, but he didn’t interrupt.
She was grateful, because she didn’t think she had the strength to begin again if she stopped now.
“He came in more than once. Twice he used that sound again. He didn’t really touch me. Not in the way that would be unforgivable. But what he did was worse.”
Her voice broke. She clenched her hands in the blanket.
“Khar, he said the Corvus cry could change me. Make me like him. So he could mate with me. And if I resisted, my cognitive functions would degrade. But I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t. And…”
The sound that cut her off was fabric tearing.
Khar’s claws ripped through the sheet in a single, violent motion. His breathing turned harsh, as if it took all his will not to leap up and start breaking the universe with his bare hands.
