Private A Dangerous Kind of Arrival

[Kaelon Virex]

Kael held her hand, her touch feathering over his skin like a quiet storm. It didn't scare him. Not even now. Her fire, her darkness, her truth—it all just was, and somehow, standing here with the blood washed clean and the "war" still thick in the air, he only felt closer to her.


Her words about bleeding, about her ability to find him… They hit somewhere deeper than fear. Somewhere old. Scarred. But Kael only nodded.

"If they manage to get you…"

She didn't finish it. She didn't have to.


His voice was soft when he answered, "You'll find me. I don't doubt that." He raised her hand, pressing his lips to the inside of her wrist. "And if I bleed, it'll be on purpose."


His smirk faded slightly, though, as he stepped back and leaned against the edge of the table, one hand braced, the other still in hers.


"Alright. Baird Throne."


He exhaled slowly.


"Human. Mid-forties now, maybe older. Originally from Brentaal IV, but he's been everywhere—Zeltros, Etti IV, even worked as a comms officer on a Chiss-run privateer ship back in the day. No Force sensitivity that I ever knew about. But tech? That was his religion. Code running through his veins instead of blood."


Kael's gaze grew more serious.


"He used to be one of the best blackmail brokers in the system. Ran a quiet operation under a dozen shell identities, selling secrets back to their owners or leaking them for fun. Information was his power. I mean… the man once used a bounced signal off a dying star's gravity well to mask a slice into the Holonet archives. It's the kind of genius you both admire and want to strangle."


He folded his arms now, thinking.


"Last time I crossed paths with him, he'd just gone independent. No syndicate backing him anymore. That's why I'm not convinced he's the top of this chain. Throne is dangerous, yeah—but if someone gave him motive, or leverage, he'd sell his soul for the right kind of revenge."


Kael turned to face her fully again, eyes flickering with something sharper now—strategy layered with protectiveness.


"Chances are he's still bouncing around the lower decks of Sector J-9, near the Eastern docks on Nar Shaddaa. That's where he used to run most of his signal traffic. If he's hiding, he'll be using a hollowed-out tech node as a shell—quiet, disguised, but still close enough to the Net that he can intercept streams. He never liked being too far from his prey."


Kael's tone dipped a little lower now, the tension in his body reflecting the weight of the conversation.


"But listen… If we go down there, and if this is bigger than him, we're going to stir the nest. That means you and me—we don't half-step into this. We go all the way in."


He looked at her like he already knew the answer.


Still, he asked, quietly:


"You sure you're ready to see what I walked away from?"
A pause, his smile returning in just a flicker of reckless charm.


"Because you already saw what I look like with and without a towel. Anything after that's just bonus content."

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Scherezade listened carefully to all the details Kael had provided. Her mind as already drawing up sketches of everything. Of the man named Baird, his throne, his work environment. Kael's words were enough to give her a general impression that she was certain had the correct foundations.

Force, she hated dealing with the techno-type. E-viruses and such left her too little to work with. Her droid, who was a master of the 'net, wasn't close enough for her to contact him for assistance.

The thought of stirring a nest only drew another smile out of the Sithling. She was good at burning nests. Killing. Removing unwanted creatures. It was almost what she was born for.

Scherezde melted into Kael's smile, and this time there was no shyness or a flirtation involved as she merely leaned to kiss his lips.

"No towels after we finish this," she promised him, making her desire, and her willingness, impossible to miss. Just in case he somehow had earlier.

"Get your gear," she said, voice low but steady. "We'll need to move before whoever sent that bug realizes it's gone quiet."

Her fingers trailed briefly against his hand. One last brush of contact, before she turned toward the door.

This time, it would be for a better reason than getting dragon or rancor eggs, something she had very obviously done multiple times before. This time though, it was personal. Maybe her future with Kael would end before the sun came up again. Maybe it would last longer. She wasn't going to pray, or guess, or hope. Those things had brought her nothing but pain in the past. No, she wasn't going to plan a future. But she would leave a window for it, and make sure that any monsters who tried to shut the window, got eliminated.

Preferably in painful ways.

"Let's go stir a nest."



Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Kael watched her move, watched the promise linger in her kiss like a signature—sharp, sensual, and carved deep into the moment. She wasn't just determined. She was decided. There was a difference, and it ignited something beneath his skin that had nothing to do with adrenaline.


His lips curved as he stepped away to grab his gear. Nothing too flashy. His style was mobility and misdirection—weighted gloves, a low-visibility holdout blaster, smoke capsules, and a few data disruptors clipped to the inside of his coat. Utility and chaos. The only other thing he took was a small silver locket around his neck, thumb brushing over it once before he tucked it beneath his shirt. A quiet ritual.


By the time he returned to her side, boots tight, jacket loaded, he looked like someone meant to disappear in the Nar Shaddaa crowd and be dangerous while doing it.


"Alright," he said, his voice low, his energy coiled, "time to go stir the hornet hive."


They moved fast, not running, but walking with a deliberate kind of rhythm—like shadows with intent. The lift took them down through the Mirage levels, past the high-end suites and the silent, opulent nightclubs that never quite closed.


As the magrail took them from the Heights toward the crumbling sprawl of Sector J-9, Kael leaned slightly against the window, eyes tracking the glow of rust-red neon bleeding through the fog.


"Funny thing about Baird," he said after a moment, his voice quiet but clear enough for her to catch, "he always thought the greatest currency in the galaxy was leverage. Didn't matter what species, what planet, what code—everyone, in his eyes, had something they'd break for."


He glanced her way, his eyes dark under the passing lights.


"Thing is, I stopped breaking for anything years ago. Thought I was numb to all of it. The jobs, the betrayals, the escapes. I thought I'd made peace with being just another ghost in the system."


A beat passed.


"Then you showed up."


He didn't elaborate. Just let the words hang between them as the train slowed. The platform ahead was half-lit, the hum of power lines buzzing faintly overhead. Sector J-9 was a maze of broken market stalls, abandoned factories turned data dens, and too many places where things went missing that no one ever came looking for.


As they stepped off the train, Kael's voice returned, low and sure.


"Throne's shell is probably buried beneath the old refinery near the junction hub. We'll need to cut through the dead plaza, past the slicer bar called Velvet Static. If the local security feeds are still running, they'll know something's up."


He glanced at her with that half-grin that didn't quite mask the tension beneath.


"You ready?"


Because he sure as hell was.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She noted the small silver locket. Saw him brush his thumb over it. Unlike the other things he'd taken with him, the locket wasn't one that had a combat purpose. Scherezade tucked it in the back of her mind, fully intent on asking about it later, when they were done with this.

As they were making their journey to Braid's place, Kael spoke of not breaking. Scherezade couldn't give the same story in return. She had broken. Harshly. She had removed herself from existence in the process of it, unable to take another breath in the state she'd been in. No, she hadn't unalived herself. But what she had done wasn't too far away from it, if she were being honest.

The weight of Kael's past settled beside her like another shadow to navigate. Ghosts and leverage. Broken things. All the usual mess wrapped around a man who thought himself numb. And then… Her? An unexpected storm ripping through the gray calm.

She didn't say it. Didn't need to. His silence was enough.

The city lights bleeding through the train window cast sharp angles across his face, and she found herself watching the way his jaw clenched, focused and unyielding. There was a kind of beauty in his hardened edge, a promise that he was ready for whatever mess waited in the shadows.

"Dead plaza," she echoed softly, the name settling in like a warning. Velvet Static. A slicer bar. The underworld's veins pulsing just beneath the city's cracked surface.

She was ready. They could kick the hornet's nest. They could undo the entire swarm.

She stepped closer, the heat of their shared purpose folding around her like armor.

The next moment, she was on the move. Blades came from her, and she knew Kael had not seen them all even when she was completely without a hint of clothes on her body. They swamp around her as she moved, taking the horizontal dive through the air, a blade in each hand by the time she landed, the rest of them spinning around her.

Her foot kicked the door of the Velvet Static open. Her knives flew through the air, taking down at least a dozen patrons before they even had the time to respond.

"Braid," she commanded them, knives now coming to a sharp halt, "Now."

Maybe it was a good time to let Kael know that despite her history, which included a chapter of being a spy, Scherezade wasn't exactly… Subtle. She had not been the one to title herself as a Chaos anything. The only thing she had done, the only thing that connected all the points in her life, was that she was damned good at killing people. And often, making them suffer for it in the process.



Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

The bar was a frozen tableau of carnage and awe. Kael stepped over the wreckage like a man who had walked through enough fire to know not to flinch from its heat. One of the survivors—a slicer with a cybernetic eye twitching erratically—pointed a shaking finger toward a narrow corridor behind the bar, voice trembling.

"U-Upper level. Balcony. B-Baird's up there."

Kael didn't hesitate. "Stay down if you want to keep breathing."

He moved, bootsteps crisp, steady, ignoring the blood still cooling at his heels. He could hear the faint hum of neon and the soft whine of the door mechanism as the corridor opened up into a wide balcony lit by the dying glow of Nar Shaddaa's evening pulse.

And there he was.

Baird.

The man looked like he'd been born on velvet and raised on war. Slouched in a wrought-iron chair like it owed him rent, legs crossed with the kind of casual elegance Kael typically hated. White shirt half undone, rings glinting on his fingers. And in one of those hands—a champagne flute, filled not with bubbly gold, but crimson.

The scent hit Kael faintly, metallic and warm.

Baird smiled without rising. "Kael." His voice was smooth, all charm and cruelty wrapped in silk. "You made it. I was beginning to think I'd have to send another batch of idiots."

Kael's jaw tightened. His eyes flicked from the glass to the man's too-calm demeanor. "You sent them. Here."

"I did," Baird said, swirling the blood like it was Corellian red. "And I'm told they made quite the mess. Or rather… she did."

Kael stepped forward. "If you know anything about her, then you know that was a mistake."

"Hmm," Baird purred, finally standing. His movements were too fluid. Not drug-fueled, not enhanced—something older. Instinctively graceful. "I did my reading. Most records on Scherezade are buried in corrupted databanks, but if you dig in the right circles, the tales become deliciously... colorful."

Kael squinted, noting the faint flush in Baird's cheeks, the way his pupils sharpened unnaturally.

"What are you?"

"Curious," Baird said with a flash of teeth, "and clearly more polite than your average host, considering you just stormed my place of business with flying cutlery and a Sith storm wrapped in leather."

Kael ignored the deflection. "You knew where to find me. You knew what to send. That's not curiosity. That's leverage."

Baird chuckled. "I prefer preparation. Call it a hobby. But you're right—I expected you. Both of you. Just not in quite so... theatrical a fashion."

He took a long sip from his glass, then licked the edge of the rim with unsettling satisfaction.

"You should've come yesterday, Kael," Baird said, his voice dropping just enough to hint at something older beneath the sarcasm. "But I'll admit, watching her work was worth the wait."

Kael's hand flexed near his hip, where his blaster was holstered.

"She's not a spectacle."

"No," Baird said, eyes narrowing slightly. "She's a revelation. Which is precisely why I'd rather speak now, before things become... irreparably hostile."

Kael tilted his head. "You said you were expecting us."

"I always expect beautiful monsters," Baird murmured. "Though I confess... this time, I may have found one I can't quite cage."

He stepped forward, glass still in hand, now almost empty.

"But as for you, Kael? You... I can't quite decide if you're the knight or the fuse."

Kael stared back, unreadable. "Guess you'll find out."

"Oh, I will," Baird said with a grin that curled too wide. "But not until I finish my drink."

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She almost pouted when Kael told some of the goons to stay down if they wanted to keep on breathing. In Scherezade's world, words carried weight. What he'd done was as good as giving them his word, so unless any of them broke their end of the barter, she could not swing her knives at them. Oh well. There were more than enough that wanted to test those words out, and she was very happy to take her childhood traumas on them.

By the time she was done and had joined Kael, his conversation with Baird had almost ended. Still, it was not their words that she was interested in. Her gaze immediately fell on Baird's glass, or rather, what was in it. She sniffed the air again just to make sure. And then a third time, but focusing on Baird itself.

He was drinking blood. That blood did not belong to an animal either. She wasn't certain if it was a mixture of someone who had a healthy mix of species' genetics, or the combined blood of a few different people. She would have to get closer to that.

But the more interesting thing, was that Baird himself was not human, or of any other species she had ever scented with her blood hound nose. He was something entirely different, even if he looked humanoid.

Baird was never going to finish his drink. Scherezade disappeared from sight, letting herself drop into one of the many shadows provided by the dim light of the room.

By the time the last drop tilted toward Baird's tongue, the rim of the glass met resistance. Not lips. Not teeth. A blade.

She had come out of a shadow right next to him, sudden as a whispered curse. She smelled faintly of smoke and florals, wrongly placed in this world of chrome and gore.

"I don't like cages," she said sweetly, voice brushing against his ear like silk with razors tucked inside.

Her dagger had split the flute neatly down its stem, glass clinking to the floor in delicate surrender. Crimson spread like a stain across the floorboards, soaking in like memory.

"Say one more thing about caging me," she grinned. She had spent over five centuries caged inside the Darkness. She did not take kindly to those who threatened to put her in any sort of a cake.

She turned slightly, not breaking eye contact, but offering Kael a half-smile that wasn't for Baird to understand. That wasn't for him at all.

"Shall we talk now?" she asked, tilting her head toward the wrought-iron chair he'd just vacated. "Or do you want to try round two of throwing idiots at us first?"

Her stance was relaxed. Her weapons were not.

Baird might've thought he invited them. But he didn't yet understand. Not fully. Not what he had uncovered in those corrupted databanks he'd found. Not what it meant to pull threads tied to ancient, blood-soaked names. Not what came clawing through the cracks when you whispered the wrong questions into the void.

She gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"You want secrets, blood drinker?" Scherezade said, her voice low and gleaming with promise. "I don't even need your blood to find out yours."



Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Baird didn't flinch when the glass cracked beneath the pressure of Scherezade's blade.

He didn't blink.

He didn't breathe.

Not because of fear—because he no longer needed to.

His eyes followed the crimson thread slipping down her dagger like he was watching the first stroke of a painting being made. If he felt anything, it didn't show in the smooth, composed mask that sat on his sharp features. The light caught on his eyes then—revealing them not as human, but as mirrors filled with a quiet, endless hunger. Something wrong, like looking too long into still water and seeing your reflection blink.

"I like cages," he said softly, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth. "Not to trap. To study. Contain what the galaxy doesn't understand yet."

When Kael stepped forward with narrowed eyes, hand reaching for the hilt beneath his coat, Baird moved.

Not fast—instant.

One moment, he was standing in front of the woman with smoke and knives and terrible beauty. The next, he was behind Kael, arm around the man's neck in a rear chokehold that bore no tension, no panic—just perfect precision. Surgical, inescapable. His fingers grazed a pressure point near Kael's temple, just shy of a blackout.

"Careful," Baird murmured, his mouth near Kael's ear but his eyes never leaving Scherezade. "I don't want to hurt him. Yet."

Then he said it.

The word that cracked through Scherezade's façade like a whispered spell.

"Endelaan."

A pause settled over the room like a blade sliding into flesh.

Not shouted. Not barked.
Just spoken.

Soft.Measured.Deadly.

"I wonder," Baird continued, tone polite but laced with venom, "if the ghosts there scream your name still. Or if they've all gone silent now… waiting for the next queen of bones to crawl her way back."

His grip on Kael didn't tighten, but it remained unyielding, more a message than a move. I could. I might. I don't have to.

He tilted his head at her, still smiling.

"Talk?" he asked, echoing her earlier invitation. "I'm always ready to talk, Scherezade. But be honest—"

He leaned just slightly forward.

"—you didn't come here to talk. You came to see what I know."

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Scherezade didn't move when Kael was taken. Not immediately. She noted the finger, so ready to send him into a blackout, and her knives froze in the air. Stupid, so krakking stupid! She should just kill Baird and be done with it. No more of the games. No attempt at manipulations. Just death, as painfully as possible. She took one sharp inhale and was less than a jiff away from making her move when he said.

Endelaan.

Scherezade froze in earnest now.

Her lungs remembered how to breathe before the rest of her did.

Endelaan.

He'd said it like a man offering candy to a child. Like he knew.

No one should know.

Her blades still hovered, caught between rage and reason, but inside… Inside, something was screaming. She didn't care if he knew about her past. Her sins. The wars. The blood. But Endelaan was home. Sacred. Hidden.

Untouchable.

Or so she'd believed.

If he'd been there… If he'd even found it… Her heart kicked hard enough to make her vision tilt. What had he done? What could he do? And still… Kael!

The Sithling's pulse, steady as ever, brushed against her awareness like a metronome counting down a death she couldn't afford. Baird's hold on him wasn't desperate. It was surgical. Calm. That made it worse. The threat wasn't performative. It was prepared.

She could take him. Probably. Maybe. But Kael might drop before her blade even left her hand. Kael wasn't like her. He didn't have a dozen built-in failsafes for death. No spells woven into his skin. No hungry Force ghosts curled in the marrow of his bones. He had instincts. Skill. Wit. Flesh.

And Baird had all the leverage. If he were to snap Kael's neck right now, it would be her fault. Her damned fault, for dragging him into this, for not just offering to snatch him away, anywhere that wasn't Nar Shaddaa. She had only met him the night before, but she wasn't ready to let him go. Not like that.

The urge to lunge, to end this, coiled in her muscles. But the knot in her gut, cold, jagged, all too real, and held her back.

She was scared.

For Endelaan.

For Kael.

"What do you want," she asked, her voice just above a whisper.


Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Baird's smile deepened—dangerous, indulgent, like a king savoring the moment before sentencing someone to the gallows.

"What do I want?" he repeated softly, savoring the weight of the question. The hand holding Kael remained perfectly still, a pale, cruel vice at the base of his neck. But the real chill was in his voice. Smooth. Unbothered. Measured like a lover's caress… or a surgeon's scalpel.

"I want what you were never meant to give," he said to Scherezade, his gaze never leaving her. "You see, I've tasted blood from Force sensitives before—Jedi, Sith, cultists, zealots… they all bleed red, but rarely with flavor."

His eyes shimmered—too bright, too hungry. Not just vampire. Something older. Hungrier.

"But you," he breathed, lifting his glass and tilting it just enough for the deep crimson inside to catch the light, "you are exquisite."

He looked down into the glass, then let his tongue trace the rim again as if teasing himself with the memory.

"I've watched you, Scherezade. On Endelaan. Hidden under the skies your ancestors swore would never be breached. You were beautiful when you slept. So still. So loud in the Force. I could've reached out and touched you, if I'd wanted."

Kael's eyes burned now—panic woven with fury—but he didn't speak. Didn't dare. His muscles were taut, not from fear, but from calculation.

Baird tilted his head, as if listening to some invisible rhythm. "I've seen how you pull the blood. The way you speak to it. I want that." His eyes glinted, deadly serious now. "I want to know."

A heartbeat passed.

Then another.

Kael's eyes flicked downward—just slightly—to the broken shards of the champagne glass he'd noticed when Baird had risen. A few had slid near his foot. Sharp. Jagged. Maybe enough. Maybe not.

But it was the look Kael shot her that mattered—fleeting but intense. A silent challenge. A question without words.


((Can you use this?))

He didn't mouth anything. Didn't move again. But his eyes—his eyes screamed something louder than Baird's arrogant poetry:

Now would be a good time to be brilliant.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She was exquisite. And she was also terrified. Baird claimed to have seen her. Seen her sleep on Endelaan. Which meant that this was not something new. This was old. She had only lived the first year of her life in her ancestral home. But… It had been well guarded. She remembered the stories, the memories that belonged to her despite her youth, and the ones told to her grandmother which had later been burned into her brain.

And this Baird… Had seen any of it?! How could that be?! The theories and possible timelines overtook her mind as she tried to calculate, tried to find a hint that would help her prove him either wrong or right.

She could not.

Her thoughts threatened to become a tornado, to make her dangerous not to her surroundings, but to her very self.

But something pulled at her. Can you use this? Scherezade blinked. Kael had probably not meant for exactly that to happen, but she heard his thought, heard what he had wanted to say in words he could not speak out loud.

Scherezade folded her arms across her chest and exhaled.

"Okay," she said quietly, without fuss, without a fight. It was as though all the energy had just left her body, "You may know."

No more movement from her. She wasn't even looking at him anymore. She was entirely focus on Kael, her brain running and screaming as it made calculations. Her pinky finger twitched.

And then she moved. Moved as quick as Baird had earlier. And as she did so, the broken glass by his foot lifted from the ground and flew right into Baird's pants leg. They weren't there to tickle him. They cut, deep, down to the bone, slicing his flesh and the fabric that covered it.

And between Braid's finger and Kael's temple, Scherezade placed her hand, ready to shield Kaelon from any wound or pain the blood drinker would try to inflict. Because Kael had been wrong earlier. She was a shield.

When she wanted to be.


Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

The shard tore through him with a satisfying wet rip, slicing through fine fabric and pale flesh like a blade through silk.

Baird's composure cracked.

"AGHHH—!" The cry escaped him, guttural and raw, as the broken glass embedded deep into his thigh. Reflex overtook elegance. He dropped Kael like an unwanted garment, stumbling back a step as he tore the bloody shard free with a snarl. The crimson now spilled freely, and his eyes—normally glowing with calculated mirth—blazed wild with something more primal.

Kael staggered left, gasping as the pressure around his neck vanished. His shoulder hit the balcony wall for support, and in the same instant, Baird, fangs bared, lunged—not at Kael, but in blind reaction to what stood in the way.

Scherezade.

His fangs pierced the skin of her palm as she intercepted, a flash of power and intent. He tasted her, just for a second.

And then he recoiled.

Not like a beast burned, but like something ancient and shamed. Something that had tasted godhood and found it incompatible.

He was gone in a blur of motion, skidding across the air toward the opposite end of the balcony, panting.

He turned to face them now, distance regained, one hand still clutching at the bleeding wound on his leg, red trailing down his boot. His champagne glass had shattered somewhere, forgotten.

"You—" he spat, not quite in pain, but in fury and disbelief, "What are you?"

He wasn't sneering now. He was curious. Cautious. And… angry.

"The blood doesn't lie," he hissed. "Yours… sings with something—not just the Force."

He laughed—bitter, awe-struck.

"I don't even know if you know what you carry. But I will."

His glare swept to Kael, who now stood again at full height, breath steadier, fists clenched.

"And you," Baird growled. "You think I forgot? Etti IV. That dockyard. I lost everything that night. She might not know the man I lost. But you do."

Kael's jaw clenched, eyes narrowing.

"And I will take everything back, Kael. Everything I'm owed."

Baird backed away now, steps smooth, confident, but not without a limp. "Enjoy your victory," he sneered, vanishing into shadow like smoke slipping through cracks in the world.

His voice lingered—low, venomous, from the darkness.

"This isn't over."

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She didn't scream when his fangs tore into her hand.

Too much of her life had been spent without armor. When there were missions to complete, people to protect, she had used her body as a literal pin cushion. Kael had seen the scars. Each one earned through blood, through sweat, through will. So no, being bitten didn't make her flinch. Not in the moment.

Even if she'd wanted to scream, there hadn't been time. Baird released her almost as soon as his teeth broke skin, recoiling like he'd touched fire. Scherezade didn't understand. Didn't move. The instincts that usually kicked in fast and vicious failed her now. She stood frozen, blood dripping from her palm, unsure what had just happened.

"The blood doesn't lie," he hissed. "Yours… sings with something—not just the Force."

What the frak did that mean?

Etti IV.

"This isn't over."

And then he was gone.

Only then did Scherezade feel her body again. Blood rushed through her limbs, her breath returned sharp and ragged, as though she'd been underwater.

"Kael!"

His name tore out of her as she turned. She crossed the distance in less than a heartbeat, hands already reaching, scanning, needing to see that he was whole. Her fingers brushed his chest, shoulders, jaw, checking, verifying, grounding herself in the simple, urgent fact:

He was still alive.


Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Kael didn't answer right away.

His heart was still thundering against his ribs, adrenaline threading his limbs like static, but his eyes—his eyes only searched her. She had stepped between him and death, hand first, blade second, and now she stood before him, bloodied and brilliant, shaking in the aftermath.

"I'm okay," he said, voice low and certain. "I'm okay."

He caught her hand—the bitten one—cradled it with careful fingers. His thumb traced the torn skin where Baird's fangs had broken through.

"You didn't scream," he murmured, more awe than admiration. "Of course you didn't."

Then, despite the sting in his neck and the phantom threat of Baird's teeth, his mouth curled into that crooked, damnable grin.

"You realize that's twice now you've saved my life without asking if I had a cooler exit planned."

He leaned in just enough to kiss her forehead—soft, warm, grounding.

"Come on. We've gotta move. That little stunt will buy us five minutes, maybe ten, before Baird sends whatever's next crawling out of the gutter. You and I—we need somewhere safe."

He helped her steady, but didn't let go. Not of her hand. Not of the moment.

"As for the rest of it…" He glanced back toward where Baird had vanished, that bloody locket still thumping like a curse inside his chest. "That bite—he bit you. And he ran like you were poison. What the hell is in your blood, Scherezade?"

He said her name with a reverence now, low and intimate.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She should've felt relief. His voice, so low and steady, should've wrapped around her and stitched the moment back together. His touch, warm and careful on her wounded hand, should've brought comfort.

But Scherezade was unraveling.

There was blood on her skin. It was hers, not his, and yet all she could think about was him That almost mark on his neck, where her imagination could already see the indents left by fangs... She couldn't stop picturing it. Not the bite, but the aftermath. His eyes, glassy. His pulse, gone. The silence that would follow. What if she'd been a second too slow?

She couldn't breathe.

Kael smiled and it cut through her like a blade. She tried to mirror it, tried to play along with his joke, but the corners of her mouth refused to lift. Her forehead still burned where his lips had touched, grounding her in a reality she wasn't sure she trusted anymore.

Then he said it.

"What the hell is in your blood, Scherezade?"

Her stomach dropped. Not because she didn't know the answer. But because he'd asked it out loud. In the open. In a city that never stopped listening. Even if she did want to tell him, this was not the place where she could give it to him, not knowing who had ears and where, what more might be discovered without her willingness for it to. And the taste of death was still fresh in her mouth.

But she knew one thing: if Baird had tasted Endelaan in her blood… If he could feel it, name it, follow it… They were both in far more danger than either of them had prepared for.

"Not here," she said quietly. And still. They had to move. She didn't let go of his hand, either. He was real. And now she had to protect him. She wanted to protect him.

And if Baird came crawling out of the gutter again…

She'd bleed for him a second time.

And a third.

And a fourth.

"Come on," she coughed, and led them away.

---

Some time later, aboard the Giggledust.

Scherezade's ship cut through the upper atmosphere. Not away from Nar Shaddaa, at least not yet, but enough. Far enough. Here, among the stars, she was in control. Here, no one listened without her permission.

"I have a bacta tank if you need to use one," she said as she removed her jacket, tossing it carelessly and messily onto a pile of papers that had a lot of very messy sketches on them.

For her, she didn't need it. The bite mark on her hand was already healing, but she didn't tell Kael that even though it was healing fast, it was healing a lot slower than her normal for this type and depth of the wound.

"There's also food and drink," she added, "but I'm sorry, there's no alcohol here."

And then came the quiet. The awkward silence. The one where she didn't know whether to speak about the blood, the bite, the thing that had chased them into the sky… Or just keep herself quiet for once.

Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Kael stepped lightly into the Giggledust's main cabin, boots quiet against the floor. The lights overhead flickered just a bit, dimming into a comfortable low-blue glow, and he took a moment to orient himself—not to the ship, but to her.

She moved through the space like she didn't want to touch anything too hard, like her body was still caught in the echo of what happened. Her voice had steadied, her offer of a bacta tank and food sounded almost routine… but Kael wasn't listening for what she said.

He was listening for what she didn't say.

The tension in her shoulders. The absent way she discarded her jacket. The pause, that breath she didn't quite know where to place.

Kael didn't reach for the bacta tank. He didn't even look at the food.

Instead, he leaned against the wall across from her, arms folded, eyes steady—dark, but softened by something quiet and unwavering.

"You don't owe me anything," he said finally, gently, like it wasn't even a question anymore. "But if I were you, I'd be trying to figure out how someone like him even knew how to say that word. Endelaan."

He paused, watching her.

"I know how to read people, Scherezade. I know what grief tastes like when it's hiding behind rage. And when Baird said the name, it wasn't just some homeworld to you. That wasn't nostalgia. That was sacred."

He stepped forward, crossing the distance slowly. Not invading, just being there.

"You don't have to tell me everything. Not tonight. Not all at once. But…"

He reached out, and this time it was his fingers that curled around her wrist—lightly. An anchor, not a claim.

"I want to know. Where you came from. What makes your blood sing with something even a monster like Baird doesn't understand."

Another pause, this one longer. A beat passed between them before he asked, quieter now.

"What is Endelaan?"

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She stood very still.

The hum of the Giggledust surrounded them, soft and familiar, but none of it reached her. Not the lighting. Not the quiet shift of cabin pressure. Not even the sting in her arm or the phantom throb of Baird's bite. All she could hear was that word, echoing again in Kael's voice, gentler than it had been from Baird's lips, but no less dangerous.

Endelaan.

Her heart clenched.

It wasn't just her secret. It wasn't just a place. It was everything. It was the cradle of her bloodline, of Force and myth and memory older than most stars. It had always been protected by silence. Even thinking about it too loudly sometimes felt like a risk. And now…

Now someone else had said it. A monster. And Kael had heard. Had asked.

Her breath caught. She wanted to lie. Wanted to deflect. Wanted to spin it all into some distraction and keep him safe from it.

But the damage was already done.

She glanced up at him. That look he gave her… It wasn't prying. Wasn't manipulation. It was soft. Steady. Trusting. And worse than anything, it made her want to trust him back. Her fingers flexed once, unconsciously brushing over the spot where the monster had bitten her. Where Kael had touched. Where Kael had kissed.

"I don't know how he knew the name," she said finally, voice brittle at first. "He shouldn't have. No one should have. At least… Not in the way that he said it."

Scherezade sighed. It couldn't even be called a fess up moment. There wasn't actually something to fess up. Except there was literally everything to fess up. Kael had met her and thought she was just some young woman he maybe probably was into it. And yes, Scherezade looked young, and if one counted life by the number of years actually lived, she really was young.

But… "I was born there," said, every word a struggle, remembering all too well what had happened the last time she'd told anyone about it. She had trusted someone with the knowledge, and they had betrayed her. "I was born there… Before the Gulag Plague."

Almost terrified, she glanced, no, forced herself to look at Kael. He was not a stupid man. She knew that. There was no reason to believe that the dots in his mind weren't connecting, that he was more or less figuring out that it meant she'd been born around nearly six hundred years ago.


Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Kael didn't blink.

Didn't speak.

Didn't move.

But something in his posture shifted—almost imperceptibly. Not in fear. Not even in disbelief. He was still, like the seconds after a trigger's been pulled but before the sound hits. That quiet void where everything real is already happening, and all that's left is catching up to it.

Six hundred years.

She'd said it so quietly, so painfully, that for a moment he hated the weight his question had put on her. But she had said it. She'd trusted him with it.

And Kael Virex didn't run from things once they were real.

A breath left him. Then another.

"…Well," he said finally, voice low, a smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth despite the storm spinning behind his eyes. "That might explain why you're better at knife fights than literally everyone else I've ever met."

He let it sit for a second, the lightness, the levity, before his gaze found hers again—clear, focused. Not shaken. Not confused. Just there.

"Force," he muttered. "You've lived through the fall of empires. The birth of them. I'm standing here with someone who's seen the galaxy forget itself. And I thought my emotional baggage was heavy."

A beat passed. His hand was still around her wrist, warm, steady.

"But it's not the years that matter, is it?"

His eyes searched hers, gentle, deep, unwavering.

"It's that you remember it. You remember it all. And you're still standing."

He shook his head slightly, lips parting as if unsure how much more to say. Then he stepped just a little closer.

"I don't care how long ago you were born, Scherezade. You bled for me today. You risked everything just to keep me breathing. I care about that. About you. Whatever the hell Endelaan is… whatever's in your blood…"

He lifted his free hand, brushing her cheek with a knuckle stained faintly with her earlier blood.

"…I'm not afraid of you. Or it."

He leaned in, just enough that his forehead almost touched hers.

"But we're gonna figure out how Baird found it. Together. Because if he came looking for your past, that makes it my problem now too."

A softer breath.

Then, teasing, but only barely:

"So… do I have to start calling you 'my lady of ancient doom' now, or is there a more polite title."

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

"Hold on," Scherezade finally managed get out. he words scraped their way past a throat that had suddenly gone too tight, too full. Kael was… He was jumping to conclusions, and doing it with that same infuriating charm of his. Her chest hurt. Not from the fight. Not from the running. From something else entirely. Something sharp and tangled that pressed behind her ribs and made it hard to breathe.

Those weren't tears. She didn't cry in front of people. She didn't let people see her like that. And she definitely didn't let them touch the raw, quiet places inside her. But her breath hitched. Just a little.

"I did't… I don't…" She bit the inside of her cheek. Force, how did you put existing into words? "Kael, I haven't lived for all these years. I barely existed for most of them. I was just… Born. Me and my twin brother, at the same time, on Endelaan." It sounded ridiculous when she said it like that. Like that explained anything.

"My mother was… Is… Was… I'm not sure, the Queen of Endelaan. She was also a powerful seer. She saw something coming, something that was going to be big. Bad. So she put us in stones. Pebbles, really. To keep us safe. To wake us when it was over."

Her voice faltered. "I was barely a year old." She took a long breath. Her mother wasn't around. Hadn't been, in centuries. It didn't mean she was no longer the Queen though. Endelaan's culture was… Very different. Her own great-great-grandmother had remained Queen for thousands of years there, even if she spent many of them quite away from it.

"And then… my grandmother took my stone. Put it on Ryloth. That's where Katrine found me, and freed me. My chosen sister. The moment I woke up, I was an adult. But not really. I'd been aware the whole time, but I'd never lived. Not until then."

Her throat tightened again, and she looked away.

"And when she pulled me out… she didn't just wake me. My grandmother's memories… They were burned into me. All of it. Without warning." A beat. "That was fifty-five years ago. Then forty years ago, I disappeared. I went beyond the edge of the galaxy. Places that don't even have names here. Where time doesn't move the same." She let the silence stretch before continuing, softer now. "Only ten years passed for me out there. So all in all… I've maybe lived sixteen years. Total. Even though I was born like, closer to six hundred years ago. So… That's the age thing."

She gave a faint, humourless smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. Another pause. The kind that held the weight of too many roads walked alone

"My official title would be Princess of Endelaan, but I haven't used it since going into the pebble. Not in any official capacity, anyway. I'm also not the only Princess of Endelaan, just my mother's firstborn daughter."

But now, because of Baird, she might actually have to step up to, into the title. It was not a move she wanted to do. It was not a move she had dreamed of doing, for so long. It had once been her only goal in life. But that when she knew less, when she did not know better.

"And that's sort of just the beginning," she scratched her head, "I've been a lot of things, Kael. A Mandragora Witch. A warrior. A spy. A saboteur. Sold weapons. Designed weapons. Killed for people who paid well enough. Took things. Broke things. People. All that in just under five years, between being pulled from the pebble and disappearing from the galaxy."

And then, finally, her eyes lifted again.

"And a Blood Hound." The word came out like something between an admission and a confession. "That's why I think Baird couldn't drink from me. But I don't know for sure. I've never met one of his kind before, or another one who had abilities like mine with the blood. I've never had my blood rejected. But I can smell him. Just like I can smell you. Human. Mostly."

She was still only scratching the surface. As far as icebergs went, Scherezade's roots reached… Even deeper than what had just been told.

"If you don't want this to be your problem too," she whispered, "or want to think about it… It's okay. Really. I know my baggage is on the heavier side of things. I have no expectations of you if you want no part in it."

Kaelon Virex

 

[Kaelon Virex]

Kael stood there, stunned in a way that had nothing to do with fear or danger or blood.


It was the kind of stunned that came when the ground dropped out from under your assumptions, and you found yourself standing over a canyon so wide, so deep, you couldn't see the bottom — but somehow, you knew you were the one meant to climb down and understand it all.


He didn't interrupt once. Not during the revelations about Endelaan, or the stone, or the seer mother, or the centuries. His jaw twitched once, at the part about her waking into adulthood with someone else's memories seared into her — and again, harder, when she said Blood Hound.


But he didn't speak.


He just watched her. Let her give this part of herself away, like it was a weapon she'd always had to hide.


And when she finished, when her words hung there between them, fragile and world-ending, he took a step forward — slow, deliberate — until they were close enough that she'd have to either turn away or feel him right there with her.


Kael's voice came low. Steady. Nothing slick about it now.

"You think that's too much?" he said, blinking like he couldn't quite believe she thought that. "Scherezade… you've got the nerve to stand there and think I'd walk away from you because your story isn't clean? Or easy? That I'd bolt the second it got real?"

His breath caught, just once, before he pushed on.

"You're wrong. Horribly, painfully wrong. And if I ever gave you the impression that I scare easy, then that's on me. But let me fix that now."

He reached up, and for a second, his fingers hovered near her cheek, unsure if she'd allow the contact. Then he let his hand drop gently to her arm instead. Just enough pressure to remind her she was here, and she wasn't alone in this moment.

"I'm not going anywhere."

A long pause. The kind that usually came right before Kael cracked a joke, but now didn't. His voice was still soft, still calm, but his eyes had that simmering heat in them — not anger, but something fierce. Protective.

"You want help figuring out what Baird is? Why your blood messed with him? I'll dig. I know people who owe me favors. I've been in darker corners of the galaxy than most folks even know exist. Someone out there knows what this is. And if they don't? We'll find out anyway."

Then, as if the fire had to be balanced with something warm, a smile ghosted across his lips — crooked, real, and a little boyish.

"But first…" he exhaled, "we're going somewhere that isn't full of bloodsucking nightmares. You've been pulled in and out of stones, stitched with centuries of pain, and chased across time and stars."

He stepped back just slightly, gave her a little space, but not so much that she'd feel distance.

"You name it. Somewhere nice. Exotic. Good food, strange drinks, questionable dancing. I'll pay for everything. You just pick the place."

His brow lifted.

"Tell me, Princess — where does a Blood Hound go when she wants to forget the galaxy sucks for a little while?"

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Kael took a soft step toward her. Just one. Barely a sound. But in that single tick of the galaxy's ever-turning clock, Scherezade's mind had already sprinted through a several billions of worst-case scenarios. Her thoughts spun like blood-slick wheels on polished stone, veering from the impossible hope that maybe he was okay with all of it, to the certainty that he was only getting close so he could spit in her face before turning on his heel and vanishing into the dark. Her muscles tensed, already bracing for betrayal, for violence, for heartbreak. It would've been easier, she told herself. Simpler. People didn't stay. Not when they knew the whole story. Not when they saw the cracks she tried to keep stitched up with grit and glitter. Not when they understood what being a Blood Hound really meant.

But she was ready. She wouldn't step away. If he wanted to do the spitting thing she would take it like an adult.

And then he spoke.

The playful penthouse boy tone was entirely eradicated from his speech. No posing, no playing, not even flirting. His hand reached up and she wanted nothing more than to move her face to make contact between the side of it and his finger, to feel the warmth, the closeness of it, for what could possibly be the last time, as though his words didn't register a certain part of her mind.

I'm not going anywhere.

Scherezade blinked. And gulped. And then Kael took a step back and she actively fought against every fiber of her muscle to just on him with an embrace. He spoke of vacation, of going somewhere, as though they hadn't both been attacked by a blood drinking psychopath such a little time ago, as though they weren't in a danger about which they knew close to nothing about. And he asked her where she wanted to go. Not where she wanted to take him. Not where he wanted to take her. It was something else entirely.

And then she smiled. The distance between them closed and she decided to do exactly what she wanted. Her arms wrapped around him and she leaned her head against his chest. She inhaled him deeply, not the blood, not anything that had to do with power or abilities, but just him, the way his body smelled, both naturally and after the stress of the final hours. Only then did she remember that she had his folded shirt inside her inner pocket, and she knew… She knew she was getting to keep it.

"I have another confession," she said quietly. If he was staying, if he was so far okay with her going the Full Monty on him… She couldn't lie or avoid it, "I've never been on a real vacation," she looked up, and a small laugh came from her lips, "I don't think I know how. I have something to do everywhere. And if I don't, something finds me. So yes, I do… I want to go on vacation with you. I can't think of anything better. Just don't act surprised if we end up in a warzone halfway through dessert."

Scherezade grinned. "And you're still paying."

With that, she finally allowed herself to kiss him.



Kaelon Virex