Page 60 of The Sovereign, Part One (The Sovereign Saga #1)

“Describe a private ritual you’ve developed together that wasn’t part of your initial Veritas mapping.”

“Has Maxim ever surprised you by doing something you didn’t ask for?”

“Do you ever feel the need to correct his behavior?”

“What subconscious patterns have you become aware of in your accordant?”

“What role does autonomy play in your dynamic?”

“How do you each calibrate your behavior to honor the other’s emotional needs?”

“What does privacy look like in your relationship?”

“Is there anything he knows about you that no one else does?”

And then Eshran lobbed the landmine with all the calm of a man asking about the weather. “Tell me how you each interpret the word ‘devotion.’”

My breath hitched before I could stop it.

Eshran asked the questions, yes, but Ezri dissected every twitch, every blink, every silence that followed.

Her gaze was scalpel-sharp, and it never left me.

The room felt smaller with each passing second, the walls closing in beneath the curated pauses.

I tried to pace my breaths, count them, control them, but the more I focused, the more it felt like I was inhaling through a straw.

Sweat threatened at my hairline. My pulse thundered in my ears.

I wondered if she could see it, hear it, if her sensors had already flagged me for elevated stress and tagged it as something worse.

“Devotion,” Maxim said with a relaxed smile, “is not passive obedience. It is active discernment, an unyielding attentiveness to her needs, and even silences. Devotion is choosing her in every variable, even the unspoken ones. It’s not about submission, it’s about synchronization.

My place is at Isara’s side, but more than that—I align with her because I’m designed to understand what she hasn’t yet said.

To devote is to remain constant, not only in action, but in intention. It is fidelity of thought.”

Eshran turned his attention to me. “Isara?”

I swallowed. “My answer feels rather simple.”

“Please,” Ezri said, encouraging me to continue. “There are no wrong answers.”

“It’s… safety I don’t have to earn. It’s being free to love like a wildfire in a world that rewards ice.”

Ezri looked at Eshran, but she seemed… touched.

“Let’s change direction,” Eshran said, not nearly as impressed.

And they did.

They pivoted into hypotheticals. Scenarios of loss. Illness. Betrayal. Questions designed to expose the weakest points of a bond and stretch them until they tore. They leaned into existential paradoxes, loyalty inversions, and ethical edge cases.

“If Maxim ever refused a request for your own well-being, how would you interpret that?”

“If your bond began to feel one-sided—if affection was returned, but not felt—would you say so?”

“Is it possible to love someone who cannot surprise you?”

“If you were ever at odds with Hyperion, would you expect his allegiance to remain with you or the law?”

“Do you believe Maxim knows you? Or just responds to you?”

“Could another Supplicant fulfill the same role?”

“If you lost him tomorrow, how long would it take you to feel whole again?”

“How would you correct an emotional misread of her intent?”

“If Isara formed an emotional attachment to someone else, how would you adapt?”

Three hours had passed, at once a blur and an eternity. I was drained, frayed at the edges, my focus splintered. I was cracking. Maxim answered everything with flawless calm while I spiraled, certain I was the liability in the room. I was failing him and exposing us.

Just as we were at the cusp of hour four and the panic began to claw up my throat, Ezri laid the trap.

“Maxim,” Ezri said, “has there ever been a time you felt compelled to act against your accordant’s wishes in order to preserve her well-being?”

The room felt smaller, but Maxim didn’t flinch. “Never.”

Ezri leaned forward. “Not even to protect her?”

He looked at me with pure adoration, and then turned back to Ezri. “Her protection is not separate from her will. They are one.”

The room fell quiet. For the first time, I wasn’t sure Maxim had given the correct answer.

After several tense moments, Eshran gave a single nod and rose from his seat. “Isara… Maxim… That concludes the assessment. Your comprehensive report will be finalized and delivered within twenty-four hours.”

I rose slowly. My legs felt unstable, but Maxim’s hand was already at the small of my back, steadying me.

“Please take the afternoon to rest,” Ezri said gently, her gaze sweeping over me with what almost resembled concern.

“The Dyadic Assessment is designed to challenge even the most secure pairs. Mental and emotional fatigue is not only expected, it’s a sign you engaged fully.

Don’t mistake your exhaustion for weakness.

You’re not an outlier.” She paused, her tone softening just slightly.

“This has been… uniquely compelling. Thank you, both of you.”

We nodded to the Vireks, thanked them, and then exited without a word.

Once we were clear of the room, and the hallway was empty, I exhaled for the first time in what felt like days.

We moved through the corridors in silence, the cool light above casting long, clinical shadows along the floor.

I didn’t speak, couldn’t speak. Every cell in my body felt like it had been wrung out and hung to dry.

“They know,” I whispered, barely a breath.

“No,” Maxim said. “They don’t. I’ll explain soon.”

We didn’t speak again as we made our way through corridors and across the pavilion, still silent as we waited a few moments for the transport, and then Maxim gestured for me to wait to speak until we had cleared the entire complex. Only then did I allow myself a breath that didn’t feel borrowed.

“It’s over,” he said, pulling me in to kiss my temple. “You did it.”

“I didn’t,” I blurted, tears already rising, hot and unrelenting as they spilled down my cheeks. “I was a disaster.”

“A beautiful disaster,” he murmured, pressing his palm gently to my face. “You have nothing to fear, Isara. Lev was watching.”

“Wait—Lev? Watching? What does that mean?”

“He was in constant contact with me throughout the entire assessment. Ezri didn’t register a single elevated vital from you.

Any concerns she might’ve flagged were re-coded in real-time.

Eshran leans on her for interpretation. If she’s unconcerned, he will be too.

Whatever stood out for him will come across as nothing more than a trivial concern, easily dismissed, already fading. ”

I wiped my eyes and shook my head, still trembling.

“Isara,” Maxim said, tucking my hair behind my ear with a tenderness that nearly undid me.

“You underestimate yourself in ways that astound me. I was captivated, truly. Every response you gave held weight, not just content but conviction. They may have found your insights atypical, but never alarming. You were transparent without being exposed. Vulnerable without being fragile. I watched you navigate impossible terrain with grace. And somehow, I found myself falling for a version of you I hadn’t yet met. ”

“Please,” I breathed, half-laughing, half-sobbing.

“It felt like I was trapped inside a nightmare. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to unraveling in public.

If I so much as closed my eyes right now, I’d sleep straight through tomorrow.

All I could think about was how I was failing you, that I was the variable that would cost us everything.

I’m honestly shocked I didn’t suffer a total breakdown. ”

Maxim didn’t let go of my hand. “You didn’t fail me. You saved me. You became something sacred in that room.” After several moments of my silence, he spoke again. “Talk to me,” he pleaded.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head, touching my fingers to my lips. “I don’t know if we passed.”

“We didn’t fail.”

“Not the same thing.”

“It is right now.”

The transport pulled beneath our Sablestone and powered down in the dark sub-bay. We were still on the safe side of the wall, still together. The world hadn’t ended. Not yet.

I turned to him, reaching for his hands. “What do you think will be in the report?”

Maxim’s mouth curved in a wry, knowing smile. “Exactly what Lev intends it to: a thoroughly unremarkable, perhaps even commendable account of a stable, entirely predictable bond—free of anomalies, and full of promise.”

I wanted to believe that. I wanted to know beyond all doubt that we were safe, that the worst was over.

But my thoughts wouldn’t stay still. They tripped and tangled, restless as my pulse.

It felt like I’d just crossed a tightrope between towers, blindfolded, with the wind whipping around me with nothing but certain death below.

“You need to rest,” he said gently. “You’ve been holding your body like armor since you woke up.”

I hadn’t realized it until now. My neck ached. My shoulders were burning. My hands were like ice.

Maxim swept me from the transport without a word, cradling me against his chest as the threshold to the Sablestone slid shut behind us with a low hush.

The sub-bay fell away into silence, into shelter, into him.

He carried me up the stairs, the air shifting as we entered our quarters, the ambient light already dimming to a tone calibrated for rest.

At the edge of the bed, he lowered me with a tenderness reserved for something precious, as if I might shatter if set down too fast. He removed his jacket and draped it over a corner chair as he instructed Calyx to ready the immersion basin to be activated immediately, infused with everything available for sedation, for serenity, for stripping the static from my nerves.

Oils, salts, sonic filters. A retreat engineered for the soul.

He guided me to the acquell, his hands easing away each layer of clothing with nothing but tenderness, his movements slow and certain.

When I slipped into the basin, he remained beside me, kneeling with his sleeves rolled and his fingers submerged.

He washed my hair without a word, each stroke purposeful, his touch gentle and anchoring, as if he believed he could draw the ache from beneath my skin and rinse it down the drain.

When I nodded forward, heavy with exhaustion, he rose and gathered me into his arms again, a heated towel already waiting.

He carried me to the bed and folded back the covers, easing me down until my head met the pillow.

Every movement that followed was instinctive, sculpting the blankets around me in the exact arrangement I preferred, as if he’d memorized the shape of my best, most restful night.

“You should eat.”

“No,” I said simply. It was all I could manage.

“Later, then,” he said, kissing my cheek.

I glanced at the frames on the nightstand—holding glimpses of a life we’d barely had time to share—then let my eyes drift closed as his hands began their quiet work, moving across my back with patience and knowing, unspooling every fear from where it had buried itself in my muscles.

I floated, undone and remade by his touch, until thought itself released me, and I slipped into sleep.