Stacy glances at me.
“You mean this moment?” she asks.
“No,” I reply. “This method.”
She studies me for a second, then nods once.
“Yes,” she says. “It is.”
The comms continue to fill with overlapping transmissions, but the tone has changed.
Less certainty.
More caution.
Less command.
More negotiation.
And that?—
That changes everything.
I look out at the fleet, at the ships holding position instead of advancing, at the enemy doing the same, and for the first time?—
This doesn’t feel like a battle.
It feels like control.
Real control.
The kind that doesn’t need to prove itself.
The kind that doesn’t collapse under pressure.
The kind that?—
Wins.
Without firing.
I glance at Stacy one more time.
“You were right,” I say.
CHAPTER 32
STACY
The ship feels different now, and I notice it the second the door seals behind us, the hum beneath my feet no longer tight with pressure but steady, like something that has finally stopped bracing for impact. The air is warmer in here, softer somehow, carrying the faint metallic edge of systems running clean instead of strained, and it settles against my skin in a way that makes me aware of my body again instead of just the decisions driving it.
I don’t move right away.
Neither does he.
For a moment, we just stand there, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him without actually touching, the space between us charged with everything we didn’t say out there, everything we chose instead of what we could have done.
“You’re quiet,” Tyrok says, his voice lower than it was on the bridge, less command, more observation, as he watches me without trying to close the distance.
