“With what?”
“Making sure today doesn’t get worse.”
That earns him a look. “Reassuring.”
“It’s honest.”
I wipe my hands on the napkin and lean back, fingers resting lightly on my stomach. The parasite shifts – maybe, or maybe I’m imagining things – just a small, settled movement like acknowledgement. I don’t flinch. I don’t smile.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” Nightshade says.
“Am I allowed to ask questions yet?”
He studies me for a beat. “You can ask. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”
“Fair.” I pause. “Are we staying here?”
“For now.”
“And after that?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. That’s answer enough.
I nod once. “Okay.”
Something in his posture eases, just a fraction, like he expected more resistance. Or maybe he expected me to demand details I’m choosing not to.
My pulse stays steady. That’s the worst part.
Nightshade glances back at me. “Don’t start overthinking yet.”
“I’m not,” I say, and it’s true in the strictest sense.
He watches me, gaze sharp, like he knows exactly how much that restraint cost.
“After breakfast,” he says again, softer this time. “We’ll talk.”
I nod. “After.”
He reaches out then, brief and grounding, fingers brushing my wrist like a check-in rather than a claim. “Rest today,” he adds. “Let your body do what it needs to.”
I swallow. “And if I don’t know what that is anymore?”
His eyes darken, just a touch. “Then we figure it out together.”
Together.
I hold onto that as he turns away to gather the rubbish, as the room settles back into quiet, as the weight of what I’m not saying presses in behind my ribs.
They’re keeping things from me.
I can feel it in the shape of the silence, in the way decisions have already been slotted into place around me.
That’s fine.
So am I.
Whatever they were watching, whatever they were measuring – it left fingerprints behind. I can feel them. I can read them. But that’s not the most unsettling part…it’s that nothing in me hesitates.
