Page 23

E mily

Vrok’s words hang in the air between us.

The silence stretches, thick and suffocating, broken only by the occasional drip of water from outside. Each drop lands like a drumbeat in my ears, ratcheting up the tension that’s settled in the pit of my stomach like a ball of acid.

I can’t look away from him.

He sits with his shoulders slumped, as if the weight of his confession has physically broken something in him. A strong, fearless warrior brought low not by a wound, but by the shame that’s been festering inside him.

I should probably be wary of him—it’s not like traitor is a light word or anything—but I’m not. Not even a little. Instead, all I feel is the overwhelming urge to reach out and take that crushing weight from his shoulders. To tell him he’s not alone in it.

“Tell me what happened,” I say softly. My voice is steady despite the storm of emotions brewing inside me. “Please.”

Vrok’s eyes flick up to mine, only for a heartbeat, before dropping again. His jaw tenses, the muscles twitching like he’s fighting himself.

But then he exhales, long and low, and it’s almost like something inside him shifts.

“I followed him,” Vrok begins. “One night, I saw him leave the village after everyone else had gone to sleep. He’d done it before, but this time, I don’t know why, I just had to know where he was going. So, I followed my father into the jungle.”

As he speaks, his eyes lose focus, like he’s not here with me in this cave, but back in the jungle on that dark night, trailing the person he trusted most in the world. I hold my breath, afraid that if I move, if I say the wrong thing, he’ll retreat back into silence.

“He met with the Pugj.”

A cold chill races down my spine.

“I watched him talk to them. Laugh with them like they were old friends. Like they weren’t the ones who had captured our males, tortured them… ate them.”

His hands clench into fists where they rest on his thighs, the knuckles turning almost white. “After they left, I confronted him and demanded answers, and do you know what he said?”

I shake my head, my throat too tight to speak. Every word sounds like it’s being scraped from somewhere deep inside him, where it’s festered too long.

“He said I didn’t understand. That it was for the good of our people. That it was my duty to protect his secret.” His voice turns bitter and hard. “He told me I owed him my silence. And I—” He breaks off and shakes his head. “I obeyed. Like a trained eponir.”

Guilt and self-loathing are etched into every harsh line of his face.

His gaze drops, as if he's too ashamed to meet my eyes. Pain radiates off him, thick and heavy, and I can feel it pressing into my chest like I’m suffocating under it.

I want to do something, anything, but I don’t know how to ease what’s tearing him apart.

“I didn’t tell anyone. I let it happen. I let all of it happen. The suffering, the Tussoll. The ambush on Sorrin’s team when they went to search for the other humans. That was all my fault. I knew he was sharing information with our enemies, and I didn’t stop it. Because I’m a traitor.”

The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on. I can hear the faint buzz of insects from outside the cave, like the world doesn’t care I’m still reeling from his words. I stare at him, stunned, as his words sink into me.

He truly believes he’s a traitor. That what he did is no different from his father’s betrayal. My chest aches with the weight of that, with how deeply he believes it. That this is all his fault. That he’s the villain in this story.

Vrok sits there refusing to look at me and quietly glaring at his clenched fist like they’ve personally offended him. His jaw is locked so tight I half-expect to hear something crack. He looks like a man waiting for a verdict he’s already convinced himself he deserves.

After everything I’ve seen—his loyalty and the way he shields me like it’s instinct, not duty—I can’t reconcile that male with the one he’s describing. Not even close. Sure, he’s got the whole grumpy, stone-faced warrior thing down to an art, but a traitor? No. That’s not Vrok.

“You think that makes you a traitor?” My voice comes out sharp and thick with disbelief.

His head snaps up, and his eyes narrow on me. “What else would you call it?”

I shift closer to him, my heart hammering in my chest. “I call it manipulation . ”

My fingers itch to reach for him, and I can’t help myself, so I take his big, callused hands in mine. I brace for him to pull away, but he doesn’t. Instead, his fingers curl around mine.

“Your father knew exactly what he was doing, Vrok. He used your loyalty, the things he drilled into you since you were a child, to keep you silent. You didn’t betray your people. He betrayed you. ”

His brow furrows in disbelief, like he can’t accept what I’m saying. “But I could have?—”

“You could have what?” I challenge him, leaning in closer.

“Gone against the man who spent your entire life molding you to obey without question? Who twisted your loyalty to him until it mattered more than your own sense of right and wrong?” I shake my head.

“He conditioned you to serve him, to put his will above everything else. You didn’t have a choice, and that doesn’t make you a traitor. It makes you a survivor.”

Stunned silence greets my words, and I catch a flicker of doubt crossing his face, like he's hearing, for the first time, the possibility that he wasn’t the one who failed.

I can see the internal battle waging behind his eyes as my words crash against the walls of guilt and shame he's built around himself. But I’m right.

I’ve seen Vrok and his father together in the village. His father would strut around like some peacock, puffed-up with his own self-importance and convinced that his way was the only way. Vrok was there, just behind him, backing him up with unwavering loyalty.

I’ve known men like that. Men who think the world should revolve around them, who think their wants, their needs, are more important than anyone else’s.

My own father was just like that. Demanding, self-centered, and with a firm belief that his authority was law.

He ruled our home like a despotic king, certain we were created just to obey him.

And if we didn’t? There was hell to pay.

And Vrok? It’s as clear as day, he grew up under the same kind of rule. Different planet, same kind of tyrant.

The realization settles in my chest like a stone. He’s me. Shaped by control and the constant pressure to obey without question. That desperate hunger for acceptance, for love—we both carry it, carved into us by men who mistook fear for respect.

His father’s control pressed down on him like a boot on his neck.

The same way my father’s temper thundered through our house—loud, explosive, and impossible to hide from.

And even now, with both of them gone, one dead and buried and the other run off to God knows where, their voices still echo in our heads.

Like ghosts that never learned to stay dead.

This isn’t just his story.

It’s mine, too.

And maybe that’s why it hits me so deeply. Because I’ve lived it. I’ve felt the weight of someone else’s reaction shaping every choice I made, and the way survival can make you do things you wouldn’t otherwise.

“I know what it’s like to live like that,” I say quietly. “To tiptoe around someone else’s moods just to keep the peace. To survive at all costs.”

Vrok’s brow ridge rises as confusion flickers across his face, but he doesn’t interrupt. He just listens. And for the first time in a long while, I let myself talk about the memories I usually keep buried.

“My father was an angry man,” I say, swallowing hard against the lump forming in my throat. “I did whatever I had to do to keep his anger in check and to keep my mother from crying. I wasn’t ever allowed to be a child, not really. I was a shadow just trying to keep the peace.”

I take a deep breath and let it out, as if I can exhale the weight from those memories.

From the fear and the constant anxiety. “I used to think if I could just be good enough. If I got better grades, didn’t misbehave, stayed quiet, then maybe…

maybe he wouldn’t be so angry all the time. Maybe he’d love me.”

My gaze drops to our joined hands. I trace my thumb over a scar on Vrok’s knuckle, grounding myself in the present even as the past claws at me. My eyes sting, but I blink back the tears.

“But men like that don’t want peace. They want control. And when you grow up in that kind of storm, it gets real easy to mistake that abuse for love.”

A memory rises, uninvited but sharp, and I don’t bother pushing it down. Instead, I let it out.

“I remember one night when my mama was working late, I forgot to put the milk back in the fridge. Just a dumb mistake.” I let out a short breath, part laugh, part disbelief.

“He lost his mind and threw the whole jug across the kitchen. Milk went everywhere. I spent the rest of the night cleaning it off the walls while he ranted about how ungrateful I was.”

I shake my head and meet Vrok’s eyes again. “And the worst part? The next morning, he acted like nothing happened. He called me darlin’ and baby girl and gave me a big hug.”

The expression on Vrok’s face softens, and a flicker of something, empathy or recognition maybe, crosses his face.

“After they died and I went to live with my grandparents,” I continue, my voice barely above a whisper.

“I thought life would be better. That I would forget him and his rages. But the damage had already been done. I was already conditioned to be quiet, to constantly worry about making the wrong move.” I sniff against the tears threatening to spill over my eyelids.

I swallow hard and force myself to meet his gaze again. “So, yeah, I know what it feels like to carry someone else’s expectations around like a curse. To lose yourself trying to keep them happy. You didn’t betray anyone, Vrok. He did.”