Vael shifts slightly, just enough to press his forehead against mine. His breath mingles with mine in the shared heat between us.
Still, he doesn’t speak.
Maybe he knows I need this moment. Maybe he’s afraid that if he does, the spell will break.
So I do the talking.
“I never believed in fate,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Never thought the stars had a damn plan for me. I always figured it was chaos. One breath to the next. You survive, or you don’t. That’s it.”
He doesn’t answer.
His fingers just slide up the curve of my spine, slow and warm and grounding.
“But…” I swallow. My throat’s tight. “Sometimes I wonder. What if some things… some people… are written into you? Like no matter how far you run, the universe just keeps pulling you back to them.”
A beat of silence. Then another.
He exhales through his nose and presses his lips to my hair. It’s not a kiss. Not exactly. More like a promise, silent and searing.
I tilt my head to look at him. He’s already watching me.
The planes of his face are softened by the low light. His eyes, normally so sharp and unrelenting, are unreadable now—like the still surface of a deep lake. But his arm wraps tighter around me, fingers flexing slightly against my hip.
“You don’t have to say it,” I murmur. “I know this doesn’t change everything. I know we’re still in danger. Still hunted. Still broken.”
He closes his eyes.
I watch his lashes flutter. Watch the shadows dance across his face as he breathes me in.
And then, quietly—soft enough I almost miss it—he says, “I just wanted to remember what it felt like.”
My throat burns.
“To hold you. Like this. Without war. Without orders. Without the end of the world waiting outside.”
I press my face into his neck. “I wanted that too.”
We stay like that for a long time.
Wrapped up in each other. Pretending that this night exists in a vacuum. That tomorrow won’t come. That Tarek’s boots won’t thunder down the corridor. That the alarms won’t sound. That the lies we’ve built our lives on won’t shatter like glass.
But the truth hangs there, unsaid. Heavy. Real.
Tomorrow, we run.
Or fight.
Or both.
I listen to the faint creak of the pipes overhead, to the flickering pulse of the oxygen recyclers. I can feel Nessa’s presence, just a room away. Her tiny breaths, her soft weightcurled under too-thin blankets, clutching that stuffed kida-beast like it’s armor.
“I hate this,” I whisper. “I hate that we can’t just be.”
“I know.”
His voice is raw. Low. Like gravel underfoot.
“I hate that I lied to you.”
