Page 100 of The Sovereign: Part One
Tove eventually turned, guiding us along the loop that would take us toward the front of the facility.We passed a softly lit rotunda near the reception chamber, where the domed ceiling opened higher, filtering daylight through layered transpane.At the center of the space, a couple stood with a Hiven in a cream dress—another liaison, like Tove.
The Supplicant father’s hands reached out, accepting the swaddled bundle being offered.The Sovereign woman beside him let out a broken laugh, tears slipping down her cheeks.They didn’t speak.They just stared down at the child between them like they couldn’t quite believe the moment was real.
I slowed again, something catching in my throat.Maxim said nothing, but he didn’t let go of my hand.As I watched the couple adore their new infant, experiencing a sudden, overwhelming joy they hadn’t known existed, I wondered if this was what faith looked like—in a place that claimed so ardently it had no need for it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Good morning, Isara,”Calyx said, the tone of his morning greeting exceptionally gentle.“The current date is March 30th, 2225.Skies are clear, light wind, projected high of twenty-two degrees, a mild and pleasant afternoon.Humidity negligible.UV index moderate.Your Dyadic Assessment is scheduled for 09:00.If you’d prefer to feel composed instead of scrambled, now would be an optimal time to rise.”
I rolled onto my back, eyes still closed, dragging the covers over my head as if they could reverse the date.Sleep had never really come—just a cycle of worry and what-ifs, stacking in my mind like a tower of leirs at a Vanguard soirée—painstakingly planned and arranged until some clueless socialite elbowed them into oblivion.Ninety or so minutes from now, an assessment meant to examine every crevice of our Vesture would commence.A Vesture that, from nearly the beginning, had been filled with deviances and infractions—minor, major, and some that would warrant a one-way ticket beyond the wall.
“Attire selection is complete,”Calyx reported.“Your Hydrabay sequence will activate in five minutes.Cortisol levels indicate a sustained stress elevation.Shall I administer a microdose of serenity serum to stabilize your neurochemistry?”
“No,” I groaned into the pillow.“Just… give me a minute.”
There was a pause, longer than Calyx’s usual beat.When he spoke again, his tone had lightened again.
“Of course, Isara.I’m here when you’re ready.”
I stared at the arched ceiling, its light beginning to glow in subtle pulses.My heart was beating far too loudly for such a quiet room.We were no longer taking just another step toward our Oathbond.It was a mirror held up to everything we couldn’t say aloud: the breaches, Maxim’s deviations, the truths Lev had buried beneath layers of Citadel compliance.What Maxim and I had become since the Eidolon was something far outside their sanctioned design.We were something that, to The Citadel, to Hyperion Systems, was dangerous.
I threw off the blankets and sat up, palms pressed into my thighs.“Okay,” I breathed.“Calyx, activate Hydrabay.”
Water dispersed from the ceiling and the atomized jets along the walls in fine sheets, striking the composite floor and transpane with a hiss—like rainfall on polished stone—while the dressing alcove’s panels emitted a low, harmonic hum.The alcove illuminated and slid open.A cream blouse with lightly structured shoulders appeared first, followed by a tailored skirt in fired clay that parted at the knee.Elegant.Intentional.Forgettable.
“Would you like a chicory infusion to aid your reentry to consciousness, or shall we face the morning on sheer willpower alone?”Calyx asked.
“Just water,” I muttered, a reluctant smile tugging at one corner of my mouth.
A frosted leir materialized beside the en-suite basin, condensation beading along its sides.I rinsed my face, then met my own gaze in the mirror.Same sharp bob.Same pale blue eyes.Same expressionless mouth.But I didn’t feel the same—not after yesterday.
Theywillcome.And when they do, you won’t have time to think.
Lev’s words seeped into the seams of my thoughts, heavy and clinging like oil to silk.
I washed and dressed in silence, my body obeying routine while my thoughts scraped against each other.The Dyadic Assessment was standard.Required.Every couple had one.Sometimes two.But for us, it felt like stepping into The Citadel’s crosshairs with a lit flare in my hand.
By 08:11, I was ready.
At 08:16, Calyx’s voice filled the acquell.
“Maxim has arrived,” Calyx said.
I paused at the bottom step, staring at the threshold panel.On the other side was my accordant, and the future we might not survive.“Grant entry,” I whispered.
This could be our last day.This was the moment we’d been spiraling toward, slowly, then all at once.Weeks of veiled infractions and deviations.A Supplicant who wasn’t behaving like one.A Sovereign who couldn’t—wouldn’t—report him.
If we failed the assessment, it wouldn’t just be separation.Maxim would be taken, to be deactivated, decommissioned, or worse.I’d be exiled beyond the wall, into whatever wasteland Hyperion excluded from sanctioned discourse unacknowledged, unnamed, and utterly abandoned, just like the Drave in the Skaarth.No one came back from exile.Not alive.Even if I could somehow make it to The Vale from the far side of the wall, use Joss’s name to gain entry, did I want to exist without Maxim?
I dragged a shaky breath through my nose and tried to still my hands.They wouldn’t stop trembling.This wasn’t protocol like it was for everyone else.For us, the Dyadic Assessment was a guillotine disguised as a formality.
Maxim stepped into view like he’d been summoned by every desperate thought I hadn’t said aloud, dressed in a charcoal coat cut close to his frame, its collar standing just high enough to graze his sculpted jaw.Beneath it, a slate-gray shirt opened at the throat, tie absent.It was as if he’d known my strategy, to dress purposefully understated, to fade into the room, to be present as expected, but wholly unremarkable.Slim black trousers tapered clean to the ankle, and his boots—polished, angular, subtly assertive—moved without sound across the composite floor.
But his olive-green irises, they’d locked on mine before the panel had even fully cleared.His gaze, confident and intent, almost broke me.
For one second, I wanted to pretend.Ask him to read to me, slip beneath the covers like we had so many times before, safe, suspended.But any delay would trigger alerts we could afford even less than failure.We could lose everything, including our lives, just an hour or so from now.And still, I stepped toward him.
“Good morning, my love,” he said, his voice smooth.“Waiting to see you was nothing less than torture.Our Oathbond can’t come soon enough.”
