Page 5

FIVE

Cerani

The crystal vein had little depth, putting it close to the surface and easier than some to extract. Cerani scraped along the edge of it, dragging her tool across the brittle rock with shallow strokes. It buzzed against her gloves, a dull vibration she barely noticed anymore. Dust filled the air between her visor and the narrow tunnel wall, smearing gray streaks across her vision.

The shaft was new—barely reinforced, lit with utility lights. Her suit’s air filter sounded like labored breathing, but at least it worked. Mostly. Cerani didn’t count on help anymore.

She crouched and slid a small fragment of basian crystal into her carrier pouch. Then she froze. Footsteps.

She knew the sound of the mechs. Heavy, uneven. This wasn’t that. His steps were different. Precise. Controlled. She didn’t need to look to know Stavian stood behind her.

“You’ve extracted the most high-purity crystals from this shaft than anyone else.” The deep burr of his voice moved through her like warm water.

Cerani didn’t pause in her work. “The veins are better here.”

He didn’t leave. He stayed, like he had the last few times he came down to check in. Most of the time he asked if her panel was working right or if her tools logged output. She gave the shortest answers possible. Never looked at him. It felt safer that way.

“What was your overseer like?” he asked.

That made her pause. Slowly, she eased back onto her heels and leaned against the rock wall. She rested her gloved hands on her knees. “At the settlement?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Cerani wiped at her visor even though the inside stayed dust-covered. “I never knew his name. His scales were purple and his eyes were gray, like yours. He kept very separate from us. I never spoke to him,” she said. “He was not cruel, but he didn’t step in when the riests punished people, either.”

Stavian knelt beside her. Not right at her side, but close enough that she sensed it—his size, the press of heat from his body, even through the suit.

“You saw your people get punished?” he asked.

She looked down and flicked a rock away with her tool. “I saw the aftermath. They took out someone’s eyes for trying to learn how to read.”

Stavian didn’t speak. She didn’t expect him to. There wasn’t much someone like him could say that would change any of it. Cerani scraped at the crystal again, letting the silence stretch. He stayed beside her.

“Did they say why the Axis didn’t allow Terians to read or write?” he asked.

“They didn’t need to.” She shrugged. “Illiterate people are easier to control.”

“That’s true.” He studied her, but she kept her eyes on the rock.

Cerani pulled another shard of basian crystal from the wall and tucked it into the box by her feet. It clicked softly as it fit into one of the padded slots.

“What about your friends?” Stavian asked.

She hesitated. A cycle didn’t pass that Cerani didn’t think about her friends from the settlement. Although time had passed, she worried about them. Wondered where they’d ended up. Hopefully, they were in better places than she was. “Lilas told off a riest when he tried to take my ration slip. She has the best comebacks. Nena drew moon cycles and weather patterns on her wall because she was comforted by knowing what day and season it was. Fivra was positive even when things were at their worst. Sevas was always threatening to run off into the wilds, and Turi…” Cerani’s lips compressed. “She’s still there, I guess. With the overseer.”

“Why did he keep her?”

“She was favored by him.” She didn’t know why she was telling him these things. It wasn’t as if he cared. Just that cycle, another miner had been taken offline by the med unit and he hadn’t even been there when the miner had been carried out by a mech.

“Favored how?” he persisted.

Cerani finally turned her head. Not all the way. Just enough to catch the side of his face through the visor. The dusty light etched hard lines along his jaw, the pale scales on his cheekbone catching the shimmer like burnished metal. His mouth was set, unreadable, but his eyes—what she could see of them—looked tired in a deep, haunted way. Like he hadn’t slept. Or couldn’t. “Favored. We joked he was in love with her, even though that was impossible.”

“Why would you think that impossible?” he asked, deep and quiet. “Are overseers not capable of love?”

“I don’t think they are,” she said with an unmistakable challenge in her voice. “Some are so cut off, so far above the little beings they control, that they lose the ability to feel anything for them.”

He sighed. It went quiet again, the kind of quiet that sank in deep. She went back to her crystal vein and scraped the rock around it. Surely he’d leave now, and let her resume her work in peace.

But no.

“I can’t find anything about your people,” he said. “The data’s gone. No species markers in the database. What scant history I learned, I pried from my guardian and was told to stop looking.”

She blinked and glanced over again. That was not what she’d expected to hear.

His jaw was set, but his expression wasn’t hard. He looked…bothered in a quiet, unsettled kind of way, like he was angry and didn’t know where to place it. His brow was drawn, his mouth pressed thin, but the tension in his shoulders said he wasn’t just thinking about her words—he was feeling them. She’d never seen that from anyone in command before.

“So?” she asked.

“So I want to understand why,” he said. “Why every mention of your species is locked under security tiers higher than mine.”

“You’re Axis,” she said crisply. “I wonder why your own system would block you.”

“I’m starting to wonder about a lot of things,” he murmured.

Something tugged in her chest. Not fear. Not surprise. Just a dull, deep ache she’d been trying to push down since they pulled her from the only home she’d ever known.

“You had someone,” Stavian said. It wasn’t a question. “A bondmate, you called him?”

Cerani’s hands went still. The crystal scraper hovered inches from the wall. “Yes,” she said.

She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t lift her head.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“I told you. He died.” She kept her eyes on the rock. “There was a fever wave the winter before we were taken. The supply rations didn’t include medicine. Not even clean water tablets.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She didn’t answer.

After a pause, he asked, “Do you miss him?”

Cerani sat back, her spine straight now, the scraper resting on her thighs. “No,” she answered truthfully. “He wasn’t kind. And he wasn’t my choice.”

Stavian didn’t say anything. She looked at him then—really looked, meeting his eyes through the suit’s visor. “Our bondings weren’t about affection. I was assigned to him when I hit maturity. He wanted obedience, which I gave him, but I didn’t grieve his passing.”

Stavian’s brow quirked like maybe something about that surprised him.

Cerani tilted her head. “There’s no rule that says loss has to hurt.”

The tunnel buzzed with the soft pulse of light from the utility panels behind him, but everything between them had gone still.

“I don’t know who decided what my people were worth,” she said. “But if the data’s gone, it’s because someone wanted us erased. We were trapped in a penal colony, after all.”

“I know,” he said. “Which is why I’d like to keep talking to you. About your people, your past—yourself.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Because I think you know more than you think you do,” he said. “And no matter what the Axis have tried to bury, they can’t erase what still breathes.”

Her breath caught, not because of his words, but because of what they stirred—some shred of old hope she thought had been stripped away, along with her name, her home, her choices.

She shook her head once, sharp. “Talking to me won’t change anything.”

“It might,” he said.

“You’ll get in trouble.”

His lips twitched. “Already am.”

Cerani looked away, back at her tools.

But this time, she couldn’t bring herself to shut him out. Not when her chest burned with a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time—like maybe someone saw her. Not as a worker, not as a number, but just…her.

She sat in the dirt, crystal dust sticking to her glove seams, and stared at the jagged wall instead of him. “You keep coming down here,” she said. “Why?”

Stavian took a step closer. “Because I need to see it. Up close. What they’re doing to you. To all of you.”

“So you admit it’s wrong.”

His shoulders rose with a breath. “It’s worse than wrong. I’ve spent cycles writing perfect reports and pretending everything down here is running the way it should. But it’s not.” His eyes locked on hers. “And I’ve known that longer than I’ll say out loud.”

Cerani sat still, but her heart kicked against her ribs. “Then why stay?” she asked. “Why wear that badge if you know?”

“Because I don’t know where to start without losing everything and causing even more harm,” he said. “Rules are what I was raised to follow. Order, performance, control. That’s what the Axis want—and that’s what I’ve done. But…” His voice dropped, almost like saying it hurt, “None of it matters if people are dying and I’m doing nothing but watching.”

Her gaze moved over him and she allowed herself to acknowledge his posture, the tension beneath his careful tone, the way his hands slowly curled and uncurled. The dark fringe of lashes around solemn gray eyes that she could so easily get lost in.

“I wasn’t supposed to connect with any of this,” he said. “Not the miners, not the system we’re breaking every day just to survive. And definitely not you.”

That last part came out rougher than the rest. Cerani swallowed hard. “You don’t even know me,” she whispered.

“I feel like I do,” he said steadily. “Enough to wish I could take you out of this.”

Fek , her chest squeezed at his words. “You can’t.”

He looked down at her gloved fingers and his own flexed, as if he were holding back from taking her hands in his. “But I can do something. A small thing.”

She frowned. “What kind of something?”

“I can teach you to read. If you want.”

Cerani blinked. The words hit her harder than she expected. Harder than when he said he wanted to protect her. She wasn’t ready to believe that—it felt too fragile. Too dangerous.

But this? This was something real. Something small and just for her. A choice she got to make. A piece of something she’d always been denied.

She nodded, once. “I would like to learn.”

His eyes didn’t soften, but the line of his shoulders shifted like some weight dropped off him. “Then you will. I’ll teach you in person, when we can. Short sessions. During your breaks.”

Cerani looked down at her boots. “We have five shared security cams in the lower break halls. You know that, right? If the mechs flag me—if they think I’m getting special treatment—they’ll take me somewhere else. Maybe terminate my placement completely. If anyone sees me with you—”

“I won’t let that happen,” he cut in gently.

“You can’t promise that.”

“Yes, I can,” he said, his chin lifting a little. “I am the controller of this mine.”

Cerani studied him. She didn’t trust easily. Never had. But right now, in the flickering light of a half-stable shaft, something settled snug and unshakable in her chest.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said in a whisper that sounded like a growl. “But I want to keep seeing you.”

Her stomach turned sideways as he said it—like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to clench or float. Maybe he didn’t mean anything personal by it. Maybe this was just about information, or control, or curiosity. But maybe it wasn’t.

Either way, it was too late. She was already caught in whatever this was. Not because he was the controller. Not because he had power over her. But because when he looked at her, she didn’t feel like one more body in gray. She felt different. And maybe that was a different kind of dangerous.

“Teach me then.” She didn’t smile, but her chest pulled in a little easier. She stood, brushed the dust from her knees and leaned closer. “But we do this without anyone knowing. And if I get even a hint that you’re lying—”

“I’m not,” he cut in. “Meet me in the south maintenance duct before third shift break.”

She gave a small nod. “I’ll be there.” Cerani looked at him for a long moment. Her pulse thudded at her throat—faster than it needed to be. He didn’t move. Neither did she. “Why are you doing this?”

He glanced at the wall, like it would have answers. “Because sometimes,” he said, “feelings get buried so deep, it looks like there’s nothing left. But that doesn’t mean someone feels nothing. Your overseer—he made a choice to stay silent. Give me a chance to prove I can make a different choice.”

Cerani didn’t answer. She just turned back to the wall and rested her tool against it, but she didn’t scrape it. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

And even though she didn’t speak, she let herself hope—for the first time in too long—that maybe he meant every word.