Page 322 of Reaper Said Mine

“I’m proud of you,” she says.

The words enter me quietly.

I do not know what to do with them at first.

Praise has often felt like flattery, bargaining, or someone admiring the wrong monster. This is none of those things. This is Ursa, who has seen the blood, the mistakes, the rage, the treaty, the cost, and the effort. She says it because she knows exactly what it means.

“I am proud of you too,” I say.

Her mouth trembles, though she tries to hide it. “Obviously. I did save the galaxy through journalism.”

“Obviously.”

“And stubbornness.”

“Mostly stubbornness.”

“And spreadsheets.”

“Do not ruin the romance.”

She laughs, then leans against my side. I wrap one arm around her carefully, no longer afraid that the next alarm will tear us apart before the breath finishes leaving our lungs.

Outside the viewport beyond the market’s upper glass, the Badlands glow with dangerous beauty. Warships still move in the distance, but they are farther away now. The lanes between them are clearer. The station beneath us hums with repairs, grief, hunger, exhaustion, and the first fragile sounds of a place choosing to continue.

The treaty will be tested.

The factions will scheme again.

The Combine will find new masks.

The Coalition and Alliance will remember their ambitions once the shame fades.

Ursa will report on all of them, and I pity them deeply.

For tonight, no fleets advance.

For tonight, the Badlands hold.

For tonight, the full-scale war dies unborn in the dark between stars.

I stand with my jalshagar above the battered market of the station I nearly lost, listening to people live, and understand at last that peace is not the absence of danger.

Peace is the choice to build anyway.

CHAPTER 39

URSA

Guyver Station sounds alive again.

That is the first thing I notice when I step from the lift into the central market ring six weeks after the signing of the Guyver Neutrality Accord. Not repaired, exactly, because too many scars remain for anyone to pretend the station has simply returned to what it was. The deck plating beneath my boots still bears mismatched patches where emergency crews sealed breaches during the attacks. Several upper balconies remain wrapped in scaffolding, and repair drones crawl along exposed beams with soft mechanical clicks while welders send brief showers of white sparks into containment fields. The air smells of hot metal, spiced vendor oil, fresh-brewed caf, ozone from active tool rigs, and the warm, crowded scent of too many people finally brave enough to stop hiding in shelters.

But beneath all of that, the market has music.

Actual music.

A Grolgath string player sits beside the refilled fountain and coaxes a low, mournful melody from an instrument almost as tall as I am. Near the tea stand, someone laughs so loudly that three nearby merchants look over in irritation instead of fear. Children weave through the crowd chasing a tiny mechanical glider shaped like a bad idea with wings, and their shrieking excitement echoes against the repaired walls with enough force to make several older Reapers pretend not to smile.