Page 74 of Alien Assassin's Heir

Solie knocks down the tower again, and he laughs with her, the sound startling in its warmth. Then he looks back at me, his smile fading, replaced by that storm again.

“I let them use me once,” he says, so quiet I almost miss it. “I let them take everything. Not again.”

I swallow hard, the taste of fear and longing mixing bitter on my tongue.

Because maybe, just maybe, he isn’t only the man who broke me. Maybe he is also the man who would burn the universe itself to protect the daughter we share.

And that—God help me—is exactly what terrifies me the most.

The sun slantsthrough the cracked slat of the shutter and draws a pale stripe across Solie’s sleeping face. For a second I just stand there and watch her—little chest rising, lashes trembling, one sticky hand curled over a ragged stuffed animal that used to belong to Vale’s nephew. The room smells like sun-warmed cloth and the faint lemon of the soap I use when I let myself wash properly. It’s ridiculous how much comfort there is in those small, useless things.

Kraj is on the floor across from me, legs folded, watching her the way a hunter might watch a fawn — slow, careful, not wanting to scare what he treasures. He looks softer now than I ever remember seeing him; the hard planes of his face have relaxed, and the gold in his eyes has a molten warmth to it. But when he looks up at me, that warmth slides under something darker, a tension like a wire pulled tight.

We don’t bother with small talk. The silence between us is too full of things we should have said months ago. I cross the room and sit on the edge of the tattered sofa, my hands in my lap, fingers worrying a loose thread. I can feel the weight of what’s coming like a knock before the door opens.

“You could leave,” I say finally, and the words are rusted with fear. “Take Solie. Go to the outer colonies. New names. New lives. Somewhere they don’t know your face.”

Kraj’s laugh is a short, humorless sound. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and cradles his chin in his palms. The light pools in his irises and something about him goes sharp. “You think that will be enough?” he asks. The words are quiet but each one lands like a stone. “Targen finds paper trails like a hunter smells blood. He knows how to pull a life apart without leavinga single seam. If we just… run, he’ll take the places between the steps. He always does.”

I hate the certainty in him. Hate that he’s right. “Then we hide better,” I say, desperation threading my voice. “We move every week, use dead drops, and disappear into places with no registry. Get forged IDs. Buy a shuttle and disappear into the fringe.”

“Valuable, romantic ideas.” He smiles but it’s not kind. “They’re also how the naive die. Running buys you time, Luna. Not safety. Not for long.”

He says it like a fact. Like he’s measured the distance to the end of every road and found it too short. I feel my chest tighten. “So what, then? You want to stay? Let Targen come waltzing in and take Solie from me? From us?”

His face crumples then in a way that hurts me more than any shout could. He reaches out, but I flinch away before his hand touches my arm. He withdraws it slowly, like he’s not allowed to simply take things I offer.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” he says. “Not if I can stop it.” His voice drops to a low rumble. “We burn the head that controls the snake. We make it look like I died in the collapse.” He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t sketch diagrams or hand me lists. He holds his jaw like a man chewing iron.

The words hang in the air and I feel blood rush to my face. For a ridiculous, bright second I think he means metaphor. Then I see the set under his eyelids — a plan forming, not as geometry but as intent.

“You mean sabotage,” I say. The syllable tastes metallic. I say it like I’m naming a plague.

He nods. He leans forward, and his hands, even large and clumsy like they are, fold together in a gesture almost prayerful. “We get the Coalition out of the loop. We stage an event, severe enough to look like an accident—something that takes me outof play. If I’m dead, Targen loses his leverage. Once the ledger thinks I’m gone, we go dark. New names. New places. No one expected the corpse to be me.”

The room tilts. For a breath I imagine him dead: that huge body still, the warmth gone from his skin, my hands useless where they have so often been fierce but never enough. My stomach drops into a hole so deep I think I’ll fall through the floor. I see Solie’s face when they bring me bad news. I see the look on Vale’s face, the grief, the blame. I taste bile at the back of my throat.

“And you think that will make them stop?” I ask, though it isn’t the worst of what I want to say. “You think killing yourself — or making it look that way — will be enough? You think Targen won’t find another way to hurt us? He’s not a man who stops at one move.”

Kraj’s jaw tightens. “He’ll be disoriented. The machine needs people to run. Take the lever out of his hand and he has to rebuild gears. There’s a window, Luna. For a while, he has to watch the pieces fall where they may.” He keeps his voice low, but there’s a fierceness under it so dangerous I feel the hairs on my arms lift. “I can stage it well enough. I can make sure they never connect it back to you. I can make them think it’s my end.”

My laugh is a sound like a broken gear. “You called me a coward for hiding things. Now you propose to die for me?” The words are sharp, the incredulity raw. “No one dies for nothing, Kraj. You don’t burn a life down to fix a ledger.”

“Maybe not nothing,” he says. “Maybe for something. For Solie’s life. For us. For the chance to build something that’s not threaded through other people’s mandates.” His eyes are bright, not with tears but with an almost holy fire. “If my end frees you both, then I’ll give it.”

The sudden brutality of it makes me want to strike him. It makes me want to shake him until every plan and lie and excusefalls out. But the truth is more complicated. The raw truth is that a piece of me trembles at the thought of him not in terrible terms but in aching, ridiculous relief: the thought that he would choose my child over any order, that the man who once put obedience before heart would now choose heart. It shouldn’t be the thing that steadies me. It is.

“What if you fail?” I whisper, the words small. They come out like prayer and accusation folded together.

He doesn’t blink. His fingers twine and untwine, restless. The air tastes like dust and fried root from where Solie slept in the next room; the safehouse seems to hold its breath.

“Then at least I’ll die doing something worthy of the blood in my veins,” he says. It’s not flippant. There’s no bravado. It’s the sort of phrase that sounds like a promise and like a verdict both. It lands with the authority of someone who has already walked through his own decision.

My knees go weak. I lower myself into a chair so I don’t fall, and the wooden seat groans under me. My mouth is a dry cavern. I can feel the thud of my pulse in my throat, the way every nerve in my skin wakes to pain and fear and the strangest kind of longing.

“You can’t do this alone,” I say finally, because the idea of him stepping into any grave without me feeling like a betrayal that will stain me forever. “You can’t just walk into death for my sake and expect it to be clean. Expect me to watch.”

He looks at me then with something that strips me raw—no cleverness, no spy’s mask. He looks at me like I am the one thing in the universe he can’t replace. “Don’t make me do it alone,” he says. It’s not a plea. It’s an order with soft edges.