He sits beside me now, head tilted back, his massive frame sprawled across the bench like the universe isn’t on fire around us.
“Your eyes twitch when you’re trying not to worry,” I say.
He snorts. “And yours flare when you’re about to interrogate me.”
“Well,” I say, folding my arms, “you do make a tempting suspect.”
His golden gaze cuts to me. “You saying I’m suspicious, news girl?”
I smirk. “I’m saying you talk like a spy, fight like a monster, and brood like a drama prince. You tell me.”
He leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, those huge clawed hands dangling between his thighs. “You think I like this?”
“This what?”
“This game. This mission. This… cage we’re flying in.”
“You sure act like it’s where you belong,” I shoot back.
He doesn’t answer. Not right away. Instead, he lifts one hand, tracing a slow, idle pattern on the bench between us.
“When I was fifteen,” he says, voice low, “they put me in the training pits.”
I blink. “The what?”
He doesn’t look at me. “Vakutan initiation. For warrior caste. You don’t get promoted by grades or ranks. You earn your place in blood.”
“Jesus,” I whisper.
“I was the youngest in my cohort. They expected me to fail. Hell, part of me wanted to. But then…” He finally looks at me,and the air between us goes still. “Dowron came to watch. He saw something. Pulled me from the pits. Trained me himself.”
My chest tightens. “That’s why you’d follow him off a cliff.”
“No,” he says. “That’s why I’d follow himback.”
I digest that in silence. The hum of the ship grows louder in the absence of our voices.
“Why tell me that now?” I ask, finally.
He shrugs one massive shoulder. “You’re connecting dots faster than I expected. Figured you’d find out anyway.”
I don’t miss the compliment hidden in the jab. “So you’re admitting I’m not just a pretty face?”
He glances at me sideways, mouth twitching again. “You’re a lot of things. Pretty is just the part that makes me crazy.”
Heat climbs up my neck. I look away before it turns into something more.
But the air’s already charged. Tension curling between us like a coiled cable ready to snap.
“You regret it?” I ask. “Serving them?”
He doesn’t answer right away. That’s how I know he does.
“I regret not asking questions sooner,” he says. “I regret every order I followed that felt wrong but did anyway because that’s what loyalty looks like. I regret…” His jaw clenches. “I regret not staying that night.”
My breath catches.
“You left without a word.”
