With Khar, she could say them.
She still ended up wiping at her cheeks, blinking hard, but he held space for her without crowding her. He did not smother her in comfort or demand she be fine. He simply stayed, solid and present, like a wall you could lean against without being asked why you needed it.
So Lily let it all out. Everything that had sat like a stone in her chest since the abduction.
And when she finally felt the knot in her throat loosen, she told him about the things that had once made her happy, too. About her mother, who never got to see her grow up because she diedwhen Lily was seventeen, but who used to get so excited over even the smallest details of Lily’s day. About how she always sang off-key when she drove, utterly shameless about it. About her father, ten years older than her mom, who loved her like a lovesick teenager right up until the last day, and who made the best meat pasta in the world, but only that, because apparently one masterpiece was enough for one lifetime. About her little sister, Camille, who had been her eternal enemy as a child and her closest person as an adult. Her father had died before Lily was taken, and there was guilt in the relief that at least he never had to live with not knowing what happened to her.
“You talk about your sister with so much tenderness,” Khar said quietly, stroking her hair as she sat in his lap. “She must be special.”
Then, as if it were only fair, he offered his own story in return.
“I have three littermates,” he said. “That alone is rare among Divani. One or two is the usual. And no one expected how large we would be.”
Lily blinked. “Your poor mother… was pregnancy and birth not complicated?”
He looked genuinely confused. “Why would she be pitied? She was proud. And you have seen the med bays on Vitro and Helios. The Divani hospitals offer the very same level of service: she suffered no real inconvenience.”
“Okay,” Lily said, recalibrating. “Right. What do your siblings do?”
“You know we call our society meritocratic,” he said. “But much is decided at birth. How compatible your parents are. What kind of individual emerges from billions of combinations.” He said it with the bluntness of a fact, neither proud nor ashamed. “My siblings and I were privileged from our first breath. Best education. Best prospects. They serve now on the Divani colonies in high positions within the Peacekeepers.”
Lily had been tapping at a console while he spoke, but she stopped and leaned back, giving him her full attention.
“Do you talk to them?”
For the first time she saw him hesitate.
It was subtle, but it was there, a brief shrinking inward. With his size, it should have been impossible for him to look as if he wanted to make himself smaller, yet he managed it anyway. He raked a hand through his hair, roughing up the black curls.
Lily’s fingers itched.
Before she could stop herself, she moved behind him and began to comb through the long strands with her hands. His hair was nothing like hers, coarser and thicker, like the pelt of something wild. Under the slow, steady motion, his shoulders eased.
He tilted his head back to look at her, still seated.
“Not really,” he admitted.
He took a long breath, as if arranging his thoughts into something he could endure saying aloud.
“I was the biggest,” he said. “So the most was expected of me. Among Divani, size and strength correlate. Intelligence as well, more often than not.” His jaw flexed once. “We were all exceptional. But I always had to be better.”
Lily only hummed, letting him continue. She kept massaging his scalp, and when her hands drifted to his neck and shoulders, she felt him relax further, as if he had been waiting for permission to be held.
“If I stayed, eventually I would have become their superior,” he said. “That is how it goes. And when it came time for a decision, I would be the one choosing which of them to send into near-certain death.”
Lily’s stomach tightened.
“So I joined the Intergalactic Legion,” Khar continued. “A military umbrella above individual species. It handles conflicts that threaten the wider universe. If the Ancient ArtificialIntelligence Uprisings were ever to happen again, the Legion would be deployed. It is also called when a new species emerges from its cradle galaxy and must be brought into the IMPERIUM.”
He caught one of Lily’s hands, pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then kept speaking, as if the contact anchored him.
“The IMPERIUM does not want to exterminate species,” he said. “Every new individual is a new potential consumer, taxpayer. Scientific value. Biological value. Cultural value.” His tone was too calm, too controlled. Lily felt a chill crawl up her spine. “Once a species joins, membership often protects them. But if a species refuses, they face the united Legion. The goal is deterrence with minimal personal cost. Enough to frighten them into capitulation. Not humiliating enough to create martyrs.”
His voice remained flat, but Lily could feel the strain beneath it. It was like watching an animal hold still while a wound was cleaned.
“New species are rare,” he went on. “Mostly the Legion deals with trade disputes, pirates, smugglers, and de-escalating interspecies conflicts.” His eyes were distant now. “You serve seven chrono-years if you enlist. And in the middle of my service, the Geons appeared.”
Khar turned his chair so they faced each other, then pulled Lily between his knees, close. She placed her hands on his shoulders, steadying herself as much as him.
