Chapter 8: Shadows Between Us
1117 Words
Night draped the Obsidian Tower in silver and glass. From this height, New Lux glowed like a promise—a perfect grid of floating avenues and disciplined light. To most, it looked like triumph. To Elena, it looked like a cage.
Damian stood by the window, back straight, his reflection carved against the city’s horizon. “You drifted,” he said without turning. His voice was smooth, but the edge was there.
She kept her tone even. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” He turned now, eyes dark, reading her like a system he owned. “Even when you stand before me, you’re somewhere else.”
He crossed the room with deliberate grace, stopping close enough for his cologne—smoke and cedar to curl between them. His fingers brushed a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. The gesture was gentle, almost intimate, but she knew better than to mistake control for tenderness.
“Do you remember our first week here?” he asked softly. “Sleeping on the floor because you refused the bed.”
“You said exhaustion didn’t care who paid for the mattress,” she murmured.
“And you still won,” he said with a faint smile. His hand cupped her jaw, his thumb grazing her cheek. “Let me carry it, whatever you’re holding inside. That’s what we promised.”
She wanted to laugh at the word promised. Instead, she said nothing. He kissed her then, slow and deliberate, as if reclaiming territory. Her body remembered the rhythm, but something in her stayed cold. And then, while his lips moved against hers, her HUD pricked with data—his heartbeat steady, no spike of emotion. He kissed like a man in love, but his body read like a machine.
When he drew back, his eyes softened. “You’re trembling.”
“Only a little.”
“Come,” he said. “Tonight, we forget the world.”
He led her toward the private suite. Curtains shifted, lights dimmed, and warmth wrapped the room like a lover’s hand. She matched his movements, her face unreadable. When his mouth found hers again, she let him believe she was still his. If he sensed the lie, he didn’t show it.
Later, when the tower lay silent and Damian slept with an arm draped over her waist, she stared at the ceiling. Sleep refused her. Thoughts circled back to the same truth: if love were enough, there would be no chain humming under her skin.
Careful not to wake him, she slid from the bed and crossed to the glass wall. The city stretched in endless symmetry, but beyond the polished avenues flickered the Hollow—a raw, restless glow where Valkor’s control thinned. Somewhere down there, whispers were stirring. Somewhere down there, Cassian still breathed.
The glass held her reflection: a woman sculpted into an icon of perfection. The neural lattice along her spine glimmered faintly, tracing a pattern that once meant protection and now spelled possession. Damian had called it a miracle. She called it a leash.
Her HUD flared suddenly. A single line of text threaded across her vision:
Seventy-two hours. Southern ring. Alone.
No encryption header, no sender tag—but she knew the cadence. Cassian. He was reaching across a web designed to catch ghosts, and for the first time in days, her pulse betrayed her.
She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Let the message fade as if it had never existed. Behind her, sheets whispered. Damian stirred, his voice low with sleep. “Come back to bed.”
“I will,” she said, masking the steel under her tone.
“Don’t make me think you’re leaving me alone,” he murmured, half-joking, half-warning.
“I’m here,” she said. The lie tasted like frost.
When morning came, the Obsidian Tower bloomed with light. An attendant delivered tea and a tray of fruit from off-world orchards. Damian reviewed security briefs on a transparent slab while she poured jasmine into porcelain cups. Their conversation was seamless: sector reports, infrastructure, and upcoming ceremonies. But beneath every sentence ran another language, silent and dangerous.
“After the biomedical forum,” he said, casual as rain, “take the evening for yourself. I’ll meet you in the west pavilion. Just us. No advisers.”
She smiled faintly. “That sounds perfect.”
He leaned to kiss her temple before leaving with promises of dusk. The doors closed. Silence fell, heavier than the night before.
Elena stood in the private garden off the breakfast room. Glass curved overhead, simulating clouds. The scent of engineered citrus drifted through warm air. She touched a leaf and felt the hum of power in its stem—a reminder that nothing in this tower lived free.
Back in her study, she sealed the doors with a code the engineers swore was untraceable. She didn’t sit; the chair could read her posture, her nerves. Instead, she stood by the map on the far wall—a replica of a chart burned in the civil storms. Her fingers found the hidden recess.
A panel slid open, revealing a narrow case with relics of a life she had almost buried: an unmarked drive, a cracked chip, a strip of rebel flag the color of fire. She closed it without touching anything. Not yet. Not until she knew which move would break the game without breaking her.
Her HUD flickered again: Afternoon. Southern transit ring. Alone.
Cassian wasn’t patient. Neither was she.
She planned the route in her head. Meditation session as cover. Sanctum visit logged in the tower’s system. A detour through service corridors, then the maintenance lift to the drone bay. If timed with a supply transfer, the scanners would read her as cargo—another flaw she and Cassian had left in the system years ago.
She stripped the silk gown and slipped into a graphite suit, sleek but forgettable. Earrings off, cuff off, ring on. The ring’s metal pressed against her skin like a quiet threat. Removing it would speak louder than keeping it.
Before leaving, she touched the glass one last time. The city lay obedient under a sky too perfect to trust. Somewhere beneath the ruins, a name stirred in the dark, waiting for her voice.
She whispered it once, only to herself.
Not yet.
The doors opened without hesitation. She walked into the corridor like any woman following her schedule. Polished floors mirrored her steps, and no one stopped her. No one saw the message burning behind her calm gaze. No one heard the blade singing awake inside her chest.
For now, she let the empire believe it had already won.
- Writer
