Page 92 of Reaper Said Mine

I stare at her for a long moment.

She stares back, entirely unrepentant.

A laugh rises in my chest, rough and low enough that both guards look startled. “You are a menace.”

“I am prepared.”

I step closer, careful to keep my hands at my sides. “Yes. You are.”

Her smile fades into something softer. The corridor hums around us, distant machines, muffled market calls, the endless vibration of a station held together by will, salvage, and threats. For a breath, I allow myself only to look at her. Red hair escaping its knot. Green eyes too sharp for safety. Human softness wrapped around iron. My jalshagar, though I have no right yet to know what that word will make of us.

“After the session,” I say, “walk with me.”

“Through command?”

“Somewhere quieter.”

Her pulse flickers at the base of her throat. I hear it because my senses have become traitors. “Is that an order?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Is that a yes?”

She takes a moment, and I value her more because she takes it. “Yes.”

The word settles into me like a blade being sheathed.

I turn before wanting can make me foolish in front of witnesses. Skahar is waiting. The ambassadors are waiting. The reports are waiting. Threats gather in every corridor, and somewhere on my station, a broker has learned that Ursa Ramone matters enough to be used against me.

That should make me distance myself from her.

Instead, as I walk toward the negotiation annex with the taste of market spice still on my tongue and her honesty burning cleaner than any oath behind my ribs, I understand the truth Skahar saw before I did.

I am not becoming weaker. I am remembering what strength is for.

CHAPTER 13

URSA

The negotiation chamber aboard Guyver Station looks like a room designed by people who mistrust comfort on principle.

The walls are layered in dark armor plating scarred by old impacts, but someone has polished the conference table until it reflects the overhead holo-light in long silver streaks. The air carries a strange mixture of luxury and violence: expensive Coalition incense burning from a ceremonial diffuser near Ambassador Theryki’s seat, the medicinal bite of Alliance sterilizing wipes on General Gobold’s gloves, hot metal from the station vents, and the faint meaty smoke that seems to linger in Reaper spaces no matter how many filtration systems complain about it. Beneath my boots, the floor vibrates with the steady pulse of Guyver Station’s engines, a reminder that this is not neutral ground no matter how many diplomatic titles sit around the table pretending otherwise.

I stand behind Gnash’s right shoulder with my compad tucked against my chest and a press credential clipped to my jacket like a joke everyone in this room understands differently.

Theryki thinks it is leverage.

Gobold thinks it is an insult.

Wilcox thinks it is a complication.

Gnash thinks it is my right to stand here because he granted it.

I know it is all of those things, which is why I keep my face calm and my recording field inactive until permission is formally established. Every person in this room has already measured me three times. The Coalition aides avoid looking directly at me while watching me in every reflection they can find. Gobold’s military staff make no effort to hide their disapproval, though one of them keeps glancing at my compad as if he expects it to grow teeth. Ambassador Wilcox gives me the tired, assessing look of a woman who has spent years in uniform learning how many disasters begin with someone insisting everything is under control.

Gnash sits at the table because it is his station, his room, and his crisis. He wears no crown, no ceremonial sash, and no polished diplomatic nonsense meant to reassure people who fear honest brutality more than quiet theft. His long coat is black, fastened at the shoulders with dull metal clasps, and the bone spurs along his forearms protrude through tailored openings in the sleeves. He looks too large for the chair, too dangerous for the table, and far too intelligent for anyone here to keep pretending he can be maneuvered like a weapon without consequence.