Graham’s mouth curved with helpless affection.

  He bent, slid an arm beneath Cora, and lifted her from the chair with surprising ease. Holding her close, he walked slowly toward the exit.

  In the doorway stood the family’s long-serving house manager, Walter. He’d been with the Quills since they bought the estate, and he’d witnessed, year by year, their rise from modest beginnings to stationwide fame.

  “Sir,” Walter said quietly, stepping forward. “Let me carry Miss Cora.”

  Graham shook his head. His voice, rough with age, carried a sudden trace of feeling. “Walter… you’ve been in this house nearly forty years, haven’t you? Time goes faster than you think. One blink, and you and I are old men.”

  “Thirty-seven years,” Walter said with a smile. “But I refuse to call myself old. And you aren’t old either, sir. You’ll live to a hundred.”

  “I worry too much,” Graham muttered. “I doubt I’ll get that far.”

  “The restaurant will find its way through,” Walter said, careful and warm. “People don’t die just because the road gets rough. You’ll see—something will shift. A turning point always comes when you least expect it.”

  Graham let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Let’s hope you’re right, you stubborn old man. Go to bed. We can’t handle sleepless nights like we used to.”

  Walter understood the hint. “Yes, sir.” He stepped back and quietly disappeared down the corridor.

  The Quill estate was enormous—maybe not a palace by the standards of the Alliance’s capital worlds, but grand enough to make visitors unconsciously lower their voices. Four stories, built to honor four generations under one roof. White walls beneath a domed roof, a wide lawn, a garden, and decorative relief murals along the exterior.

  Green vines climbed the railings—rosebushes trained into careful beauty.

  The meeting hall lay deep on the ground floor. Graham carried Cora down the corridor and into the courtyard.

  That was when Cora opened her eyes.

  She’d been resting against his shoulder with her eyes closed, but now her lashes lifted without warning. There was no sleepy haze in her gaze at all. Her eyes were clear—too clear—like a deep well that had never once been disturbed.

  And in that darkness, seven moons burned.

  Seven colored moons—each one a world—circled the Alliance’s capital planet in endless rotation, day after day, year after year. They lit the night in bands of red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet, their glow catching scattered stars between them.

  Together, they made the sky look almost unreal.

  Those seven worlds and the capital they circled were the wealthiest, most powerful inhabited planets in the Pandora Reach.

  Nina Station was far away—so far that most people could only look up and envy the light.

  “I like the purple one,” Cora said suddenly, her voice crisp against the night.

  Graham frowned and followed her gaze to the most distant violet moon, wrapped in a faint, eerie haze. “That’s Violet Moon. People also call it the Witch Moon. It’s the most lawless world in the Reach. Pirates loiter there year-round. It’s not a safe place.”

  Violet Moon had once been fought over for its rare ore—ore that could be refined into a metal used in the early days of mech frames and starship hulls. It took an obscene amount of raw rock to produce a sliver of the refined material, which only made it more coveted.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The Alliance, pirate factions, outsiders from other regions, and armed private merchant groups had torn the planet apart for decades.

  Thirty years of war.

  Eventually, a new synthetic composite replaced the old metal, and Violet Moon was quietly abandoned. Years of battle and uncontrolled mining left the world scarred and hollowed.

  The Alliance evacuated its citizens.

  Violet Moon became the first officially forsaken planet in the Reach.

  But it never became empty.

  It turned into a trade hub for pirates, smugglers, and every underground network that needed a place to exchange goods without questions. The busiest world in the shadows—and the most chaotic.

  “Witch Moon,” Cora said, smiling softly. “That’s a pretty name.”

  Then, like it was the most reasonable thought in the universe, she added, “Grandpa, you can buy real meat and vegetables there, right? Why don’t we buy our ingredients on Violet Moon?”

  Graham answered patiently, as if he were explaining fire to a child. “Because it’s dangerous. Even if you buy the supplies, there’s no guarantee you’ll get them off-world. And even if you do, the route back is full of pirates. Losing money would be bad enough. The worst case is losing the ship and everyone on it.”

  “But if we don’t,” Cora said, still watching the violet moon, “our restaurant goes under.”

  Light flickered in her eyes—small, sharp, hungry.

  “Cora,” Graham said firmly, “we’re merchants. We’re not gamblers. We don’t bet lives.”

  “Okay,” Cora said, obedient as an angel.

  She rested her cheek back on his shoulder and fell silent.

  She didn’t agree with him. Not really. In her mind, merchants were gamblers—just the boldest kind, the ones who smiled while risking everything.

  But she didn’t argue.

  Not when his words carried something she hadn’t realized she’d missed until she found it again: the warmth of being protected. The feeling of having someone worry about you.

  When he laid her on her bed, Graham tucked her in and pulled a soft pink quilt up to her chest. She kept staring at him with those too-bright eyes, so he smiled.

  “Good night, my little lady.”

  “Good night, my honored gentleman,” Cora replied.

  Her room was small, and because it was small, it was warm.

  Pink curtains. Pink pillows. Pink quilt. Pink sheets—everything in her line of sight washed in soft rose tones. It was the color of comfort, of a dream someone wanted to keep intact.

  And it had all been chosen by Graham Quill himself—the old gentleman everyone else called rigid and old-fashioned.

  When Cora was six, after her parents died, she’d shut down completely. No one in the family could reach her.

  No one except Graham.

  He’d approached her the way you approached a frightened animal—patient, day after day, never demanding, never forcing, until she finally stopped flinching from his presence.

  Cora’s nature had been too cold, too sealed away, as if she lived in a world where no one else could enter. So Graham had filled her room with pink, dotting her world with warmth, determined to make it safe and gentle.

  That was the memory.

  That was the tenderness.

  But the truth was, the soul inside her wasn’t the same one anymore.

  Cora Quill’s body now carried someone else’s will—someone forged thirty years in the future. A name that once made entire trade routes go silent.

  Aria Vale.

  The infamous pirate leader of the Red Widow Fleet, known across the Reach as the Pink Queen.

  In the year 4550, her fleet had been surrounded and annihilated by the Alliance Navy. She had died—

  And then, by some impossible twist, awakened inside the body of a twelve-year-old girl who had just died of illness.

  A month had passed since then. Cora—Aria—had already worked out the truth.

  This wasn’t just a second life.

  This was thirty years back in time.

  Aria had grown up among rough men who lived by blades and gunfire—people who laughed with blood on their hands and called it a good day. Under that influence, her personality had sharpened into something blunt and fearless. After her adoptive father handed her the captain’s seat, she took command of the entire fleet and became the terror everyone spat out through clenched teeth: the Pink Queen.

  And yet, beneath all of that, she was still a woman.

  She still wanted what the pirate life had never been able to give her—quiet, ordinary family warmth. Her adoptive father couldn’t offer it. Her crew couldn’t offer it. The life they lived didn’t allow it.

  But in this new body—in this strange, pink room—she’d felt it.

  For the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to be cherished.

  To crave a family’s embrace.

  To linger in the glow of a grandfather’s soft, indulgent gaze.

  All of it was rare. All of it was precious.

  Without realizing when it happened, she’d accepted her new identity. And with it, she’d started wanting something she’d never wanted before.

  To save this family.

  To save their restaurant.

  Cora lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and spoke the words in her mind as clearly as if she were giving a command.

  Initiate War-God System.

  Whatever that mysterious system was—whatever had dragged her back from death and rewound time—it might be the only thing that could break the Quills out of this trap.