He opened his eyes a fraction. Then, when he saw Lily wasn’t recoiling, he looked at her fully.
Lily felt as if she were standing in divine light. Everything ugly and guilty inside her was exposed, and yet, in that exposure, she could breathe. She had said it. Now the weight of the decision was no longer hers alone.
“Lily, there is nothing Horos could change in you that has anything to do with who you are. Nothing that matters,” Khar began, but the words sparked a flare of anger in her.
“That’s easy for you to say!”
Khar did not flinch at her outburst. His voice did not waver, his gaze did not shift as he continued.
“Yes. I was not there with you, and I will regret that until my last breath. You endured something monstrous and you faced it alone. And even so, I am right. No one survives life without scars. But only you can decide what those scars mean.”
Lily froze under the weight of his words, then pushed away from him. It was easier to speak with some distance between them.
“Maybe that is true. But it is not what I feel right now. Do you not understand that I may not be compatible with you anymore? And that Horos forced this on me? It is not enough that he kidnapped me, he had to shape me into something else, something that will always remind me of what he did?”
The look Khar gave her was as if she had struck him.
“I know exactly what the Corvus cry does. I am not saying what you suffered is forgivable. If I could, I would bleed that nobody out piece by piece for daring to harm you. But how can you believe we would not be compatible? There is nothing in this entire raging universe for me except you!”
Khar’s cool composure shattered as he worked himself up, yet somehow his rising fury steadied her. It was as if he had taken the sharpest edge of her pain into himself, clearing her mind enough to think again.
“Khar, I need the truth. I will need a deep scan. Helios… the ship will have my previous data. I will see exactly what happened.”
Khar rose at once and started toward the door. His broad back was still magnificent, but Lily saw the stiffness in his posture, the subtle tremor in his movement, the way he hid the sadness bleeding through. At the doorway he turned back to her.
“I will wait outside. Take the time you need.”
Not long ago it would have felt strange that Khar saw her bare. Now, as he stepped out and the hatch sealed behind him, his absence left a hollow space in the room.
They walked toward the medical station in silence, but at some point Khar’s warm hand found hers and held it, steadying her. Lily lay down beneath the arch of the scanners, and Khar took his place by the control console.
“Shall we begin?”
Lily nodded.
“I am ready.”
Not long after the scan began, she passed out, the same way she had the first time.
Last time, she had met Helios, and her life had changed completely. She had become stronger, more independent, more whole, because of herself, yes, but also because of Helios and Khar.
Without them, the shifts that reached into her core would never have happened.
So what would this next chapter of her fate demand?
As her consciousness went dark, Lily’s final thought was a spark of hope.
Please, let me keep them.
The two irreplaceable presences without whom her life was unimaginable.
Chapter 30
Hope Is the Strongest Drug in the Universe
Khar
“Should have snapped that Corvus wretch’s neck the moment I had the chance.”
