The outpost came into view through the cruiser’s forward viewport as a cluster of matte gray structures built directly into a ridge of black rock, half-buried against the terrain like it had been designed to survive an actual siege instead of just weather, solar arrays fanned out along the cliffside catching the thin light of a distant sun, and a landing pad big enough for a dozen ships sitting right at the base of it all already lit up and waiting for them. Ren pressed his face a little closer to the glass despite himself, and somewhere in the back of his head a small, stupid part of him thought it actually looked kind of cool, in a bleak, end-of-the-world military installation kind of way.
The cruiser touched down clean, and the second the ramp hissed open Ren understood exactly how this was going to go, because the entire landing pad was full of people, Sentinels in training gear, officers in crisp uniforms, support staff with data pads clutched to their chests, all of them turning to look the moment he stepped off the ramp behind Yegard, and none of it was the curious, welcoming kind of looking.
The whispering started before his boots even hit the ground properly. He caught fragments of it drifting through the crowd, not even bothering to stay quiet. That’s him. That’s the Miller heir. The one who spent years making everyone’s life hell over the Grand Marshal. Obsessed doesn’t even cover it, my cousin served under him for a year and said it was a nightmare. Can’t believe he actually showed his face here after everything. Wonder what he did this time to end up dragged out to the edge of nowhere.
’Great,’ Ren thought, standing there in the middle of it all with his bag slung over one shoulder and absolutely nowhere to hide. ’Guess this is where I’m gonna die, huh. Not from a monster. From secondhand embarrassment for a crime I didn’t even commit.’
He’d known, abstractly, that Rafayal’s reputation was bad. He’d read the book. He’d watched the guy sabotage careers and throw tantrums and generally act like the worst person in every scene he appeared in. But knowing it on a page and standing in the middle of a landing pad full of strangers who’d apparently built an entire mental file on him titled the most insufferable person in the Empire were two very different experiences, and Ren was quickly discovering he hated the second one significantly more.
"Ignore them," Yegard said beside him, not even glancing at the crowd, already walking toward the main building like the whispering wasn’t happening at all. "They talk. They always talk. It stops mattering once you prove them wrong enough times."
"Easy for you to say, you’re not the one they’re calling the yet-to-be-exceeded record holder for worst behavior in Sentinel Corps history," Ren muttered, catching that particular phrase from somewhere in the crowd and immediately wishing he hadn’t. ’Yet to be exceeded,’ he thought bitterly. ’Fantastic. I haven’t even unpacked yet and I’m already a benchmark for terrible.’
He didn’t get much further than that thought before a woman came striding across the landing pad toward them, moving with the kind of confidence that only came from knowing exactly how good she looked doing it, sharp blue Sentinel uniform tailored close, dark hair pulled back in a style that probably took real effort, and the second she reached them she slid her hand straight into Yegard’s like it belonged there, like she’d done it a thousand times before and had no intention of asking permission to do it again.
"Baby, why are you still standing here with this filthy trash," she said, not even bothering to lower her voice, tilting her head to give Ren a slow, deliberate once-over that made it very clear exactly how little she thought of what she saw. "And ew, he even smells. Did they let him board the cruiser like that, or did he just roll in something on the way here."
’You old woman,’ Ren thought immediately, teeth gritting behind a perfectly blank expression, ’how dare you insult the almighty right in front of him.’ It was a genuinely unhinged thought to have about himself, and he knew it, and he had it anyway, because apparently three days of hating Rafayal Miller from a reader’s chair hadn’t fully prepared him for the specific rage of having someone insult his current face to his current face.
"He can hear you," Yegard said flatly, not pulling his hand away, which Ren noted with an irritation he refused to examine too closely.
"I know he can hear me, that’s kind of the point," the woman said, smiling sweetly at Ren in a way that didn’t reach her eyes at all. "You should know Yegard isn’t yours anymore, not that he ever really was, because a man like him was never going to love someone like you no matter how hard you tried to trap him into that engagement in the first place. It’s honestly a little sad, watching you follow him all the way out here like some kind of stray that doesn’t know when it’s been kicked out for good."
Ren felt something in him go very still and very calm, the way it always did right before he said something he probably shouldn’t, except this time it came wrapped in a decade of internet arguments and reality show reunion specials he’d absorbed back on Earth, none of which this woman had any possible way of understanding, which somehow made it even better.
"Cute speech," Ren said, tone perfectly pleasant, "but I didn’t ask for a wellness check from someone who clearly peaked the day she learned how to hold a man’s hand in public like it’s an achievement. You can have him all to yourself, genuinely, no notes, because looking at him for longer than five minutes at a time makes me feel physically ill, and I would honestly rather kiss the business end of one of those six-legged monsters back on that moon than spend one more second pretending I’m interested in whatever this is."
The silence that followed was immediate and total. Somewhere behind them, someone actually choked on their own breath.
The woman’s face went through several stages of confusion in quick succession, clearly trying to process an insult delivered in a rhythm and vocabulary that didn’t exist anywhere in this galaxy, something about the phrasing landing sideways and hitting somewhere she didn’t have defenses built for, and for one glorious second she looked like she genuinely didn’t know what to say back. Ren watched her recalibrate in real time and decided he’d take the win while it lasted.
"Excuse me," she finally managed, voice climbing half an octave, "do you have any idea who you’re speaking to—"
"Nope, don’t care, wasn’t planning on learning your name either," Ren said, already turning away from her before she could finish the sentence, because honestly the satisfaction of watching her sputter was already fading into exhaustion, and he had exactly zero energy left to invest in a woman who thought holding someone’s hand in public counted as a personality. "I’m going to go find wherever I’m staying now. This has been a wonderful welcome, truly, ten out of ten hospitality, please don’t follow me."
He didn’t wait to see how Yegard reacted to any of it. He just walked, cutting straight through the crowd on the landing pad, ignoring the fresh wave of whispers that kicked up in his wake, ignoring the woman’s voice still going somewhere behind him, ignoring the specific, uncomfortable awareness that Yegard hadn’t said a single word in his defense the entire time, hadn’t pulled his hand back until Ren had already turned to leave, and Ren was absolutely, completely not thinking about what that meant, because it didn’t matter, because none of this mattered, because the whole point of coming out here was distance and control and staying alive, not whatever complicated mess was apparently already forming around this particular corner of his new life.
The outpost’s interior was better than the reception outside, at least. Long gray corridors lit by strips of cool white light, doors sliding open automatically as he passed motion sensors, the low electronic hum of climate systems and data terminals running in the walls. A junior officer eventually caught up to him, flustered and apologetic, and walked him the rest of the way to a small private quarters that had apparently been prepped in advance, which told Ren that whatever Yegard’s plan had been, at least somebody up the chain had known he was coming and bothered to get a room ready.
He sat down on the edge of the narrow bunk once the door slid shut behind him, dropped his bag on the floor, and let himself finally breathe for the first time since the landing pad. ’Okay,’ he thought. ’That went about as well as I expected it to go, which is to say, terribly, but at least I’m alive and nobody’s tried to execute me yet, so technically I’m still ahead of schedule compared to the original ending.’
He thought about the book, then, properly, for the first time since waking up in that too-large Capital bed. Empire of Thorns hadn’t spent much time on side characters, not the way it obsessed over Yegard’s rise through the ranks or catalogued every one of Rafayal’s escalating tantrums in loving, punishing detail. But Ren remembered enough scattered details to worry about. He remembered this outpost existing somewhere in the background of the story, mentioned once or twice as the place where Yegard cut his teeth early in his career, remembered vague references to something happening out here eventually, some incident involving the monster territory bordering the sector, something that mattered enough to get name-dropped even in a story that barely cared about anything that wasn’t directly touching its two leads.
’If I’m remembering that right,’ Ren thought, staring up at the plain metal ceiling of his new quarters, ’then something’s going to happen out here eventually that actually matters to the plot, and I have absolutely no idea what it is, or when it happens, or whether it’s the kind of thing that gets people killed.’ He didn’t have the details. He’d read the book for entertainment, not for research, and now that entertainment was apparently his actual life, and he was going to have to survive it with nothing but fragments and vibes and a newly awakened superpower he didn’t know how to control.
Still. Better fragments than nothing. Better an outpost full of people who hated him on sight than a Capital full of people who’d eventually want him dead for real. He’d take suspicious whispers and one deeply unpleasant woman over an execution squad any day of the week, in either of his lives.
Ren closed his eyes, let his head fall back against the wall, and allowed himself exactly one full minute of feeling sorry for himself before forcing his brain back into something resembling a plan. Learn the outpost. Learn the rank system, properly this time, not just the vague secondhand knowledge sitting in Rafayal’s borrowed memories. Figure out what was actually coming for this sector before it arrived and figured him out first. And, somewhere underneath all of that, quietly, in a part of his brain he wasn’t ready to interrogate yet, keep half an eye on Yegard, because a man who’d said nothing while some woman tore into his ex-fiancé on a public landing pad and then let his hand get taken without a second thought was either exactly as cold as advertised, or hiding something a lot more complicated underneath it.
Either way, Ren figured he had time to find out. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet.