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He continued working. “Talia Mercer was very specific.”

Of course she was. Something in my chest loosened despite the pain.

The door opened.

Talia came through the door before the guard finished opening it.

She did not wait to be announced. She did not look at the guard. She came in the way she had crossed the hangar deck on Vurh Sec, one stride at a time, and she did not stop until her boots hit the medical seal on the floor.

Her hair was pulled back, loose strands falling free at her temple, and dried blood marked one sleeve.

Mine.

Her eyes found me. She stopped dead, her breath catching in her throat. The tension in her shoulders eased a fraction, but the line of her mouth remained hard.

My heart skipped beats. More than a few.

The medic looked up from the control monitors when my reaction to Talia registered.

Her voice was a low scrape of sound. “You’re awake.”

My hand lifted, a slow, deliberate offering, palm upturned. A question I couldn’t shape into words. She crossed the room. Her gaze locked on my outstretched hand, tracing the lattice of old scars, the faint silver light of my ŭre struggling beneath the skin.

Then her fingers met mine. Not a tentative touch. A claiming.

Heat flooded through me, immediate and shocking. Her skin was warm, her grip solid and real, anchoring me to the present. My ŭre flared in response, a sudden, brilliant surge of silver-white light igniting beneath our joined hands, burning through the dull ache of my injuries.

The medic swore softly behind me, a sharp, truncated sound.

Talia glanced toward him. “Is that bad?”

“No.”

He looked at me. “Probably.”

I ignored him. “You were injured?”

Talia glanced down at the dried blood on her sleeve. “None of it is mine.”

“You were checked?”

“Completely.” Her eyes narrowed. “And if you ask me again, I’m having him sedate you.”

I stopped. Another skill.

The door opened again.

This time, the room changed before anyone spoke.

The royal guards outside straightened. The medic stepped back, and Talia looked toward the entrance.

I did not need to.

I knew the voice when it came.

“Leave us.”

The air in the room went still. That voice—low, precise, layered with command—cut through eight years of silence like it had been yesterday. Anik stepped into the medical bay. His shoulders were broader now, his posture more deliberate, less the fluid readiness of a field commander and more the anchored weight of a man who held systems in his hands. The same dark gray skin, the same severe sweep of black hair pulled back from a face that had new lines at the corners of his eyes. Faint blue ŭre traced the line of his throat like submerged circuitry.