“No,” I say. Not loud. Not sharp. Absolute. “You don’t get to manage this. How long?”
The silence stretches.
I let it.
Because this is what I took from him. Timing. Control. The ability to decide when truth is released.
Finally, he exhales. “Since the island. The night you were taken.”
A sound leaves my chest that isn’t quite a laugh.
“So you knew,” I say. “All of it? The Director. The return. The fact that this was never over.”
“I suspected.”
“And about my…real…family – you knew that too?”
“Yes.”
The word is clean. Unembellished.
“And you decided not to tell me.”
“I decided to wait.”
That word again.
Wait.
Something in me twists, sharp and precise.
“Why?” I ask.
This time, he answers too quickly. “Because you were barely holding together. Because you were pregnant. Because you were being hunted. Because if you’d known what returning meant before you were ready, you would have?—”
“—lost my autonomy?” I finish for him. “Again.”
He stops.
The others go very still.
I tilt my head. “Is that the word you’d use? Or would you prefer Valentine’s?”
Nightshade’s jaw tightens. “I was trying to protect you.”
There it is.
The justification.
The one he’s been carrying, polishing, convincing himself would hold.
I nod once, like I’m acknowledging a report.
“By deciding for me.”
“No,” he says immediately. Too fast. “By buying you time.”
Time.
