I've spent years armoring against this kind of strike. What he's telling me, what he's revealing in the negative space between his sentences. Whether he's talking about Tomás or about himself. Whether he realizes how much he's exposing with that quiet admission.
“Everyone's worth saving.” This is the foundation on which I've built my entire career. “That's the whole point of medicine. You don't get to decide who deserves to live.”
“And yet you came here for your brother. Not for a stranger.”
“Tomás isn't a stranger.”
“No.” A pause that carries weight beyond my comprehension. “He's family.”
The way he says the word makes it sound like a wound. He has twisted something that should mean warmth and safety into a weapon, and he uses it against himself in ways I can only begin to imagine. I think about his mother, executed when he was twelve, her story renowned throughout the galaxy. I wonder what lessons a child learns from watching that, what walls he built to survive the aftermath.
“Family is complicated.” The words come out gentler than I intend, and I hear the shift in my voice toward something dangerously close to compassion. “It makes you do things youswore you'd never do. Sacrifice things you can't afford to lose. Love people who hurt you, over and over, because walking away would mean admitting they were never worth holding on to.”
He doesn't respond. The silence between us holds a different quality now, less interrogation and more the quiet understanding of two people who have both lost more than they can say. The air between us feels charged, heavy with things neither of us is saying. He's close enough that I could press my palm against his chest if I lifted my hand. I don't. But I think about it, and from the way his jaw tightens, the way his silver eyes drop to my mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back up, I think he knows I'm thinking about it.
“I should let you rest. You've earned it.” He moves toward the door.
“Will you tell me if anything changes?” The question escapes before I can consider whether I should ask it. “With the investigation into what happened to Krel. The injuries that keep occurring.”
He stops at the threshold. Turns. His strange, flat eyes find mine across the medical bay, and there it is. Interest. Genuine interest. Like I've asked the right question.
“You noticed.”
“Three serious injuries in as many weeks, according to what I've overheard. Your staff were too stretched to handle this one because the primary medic was dealing with another situation across the city. That's a pattern. Patterns mean something.”
He's quiet for a long moment, that gaze weighing me in ways I can't see. Then something shifts. A decision being made.
“Rest tonight. Tomorrow, we talk about patterns.”
He leaves before I can respond, footsteps silent on the stone floor.
Making sense of what just happened seems impossible. He came to ask questions. Listened when I answered. Revealedthings about himself that I'm sure he didn't intend to reveal, and he left me with a promise that sounds nothing like ownership.
This is dangerous.
I expected a monster. I found someone damaged and guarded and capable of something that looks almost like compassion if I squint hard enough to see it.
I found someone who listened when I talked about my mother. Someone who knows his enforcer's sister sends weekly messages. Who stood outside my door in the dark of night for reasons I still don't understand.
A male whose proximity makes my skin flush and my pulse race, whose attention feels like being touched, whose voice wraps around something low in my belly and pulls.
I found someone I might understand.
And that, more than anything, is what I can't afford.
Chapter Six
DRAZEX
Torvin is dead. The words burn across my vision in pale blue light, and for three heartbeats I let myself believe the report contains an error. Torvin, who survived the Sector Nine purge. Who pulled Krel from a firefight last year and took a blade through his shoulder for the trouble. Whose heart was strong enough to beat through injuries that have killed lesser males.
His heart stopped in the night. Cardiac arrest, the report says. Natural causes.
I've never believed in natural causes.
The compound stirs beyond my office walls, morning routines carrying on as though the world has not shifted beneath us. Three weeks. Four of my best enforcers in three weeks. Jorath, his transport slamming into the canyon wall when the guidance system failed. Rennix, found at the bottom of a maintenance shaft with a broken neck. Krel, bleeding out on my medical bay table from a plasma shot that should have gone wide. NowTorvin, dead in his sleep as though he were an old male whose time had come.
He was thirty-four. His time had not come. Someone brought it to him.
