He turns to leave, then stops. His shoulders carry a tension I haven't seen since we were boys, since the days after our mother's execution when we slept in the same room because neither of us could bear the dark alone.
“Do you remember what you told me? After Lyris?” His back remains turned, the words directed at the corridor rather than me. “I wanted to claim her. Wanted to keep her. You said Father would destroy anything I cared about, and I should let her go before he had the chance.”
The memory surfaces. Samai at twenty-three, wild with a devotion I recognized because I'd been trained to fear it. The merchant's daughter who laughed at his jokes and openly hugged him. Gone within a month, reassigned to a trading post on the planet's far side.
“I remember.”
“I hated you for being right.” He turns, and his eyes hold something I haven't seen there in years. “Don't let him do to your female what he did to mine.”
He walks away before I can respond. The corridor settles into silence, and I stand outside my door, processing what my brother has revealed. He said nothing I hadn't known. My father will move against her. He won't allow me to repeat the mistake he believes destroyed him.
Two threats now. Vezra somewhere in my compound, the traitor I never saw coming. And my father circling from above, waiting to remove the weakness he's identified in his heir. One enemy I can hunt. The other shares my blood and commands the house I've sworn to serve. Between them, they hold my Chosen in a vice that tightens with every hour I fail to act.
I enter my quarters expecting to find her sleeping. Instead, Maeve stands in the center of the room taut with unrepressed tension. Her gaze finds mine in the amber glow, and relief floods her features.
“You're back.”
“You should be resting.”
“Someone stood outside your door after you left. I heard their footfalls. They stayed there for minutes, then walked away without entering. I thought they were here for you.”
Her words fracture before she can finish them, and I read the rest in the lines of her face. The furrow between her brows. The sheen in her dark eyes that speaks of a fear she's been carrying while I dealt with blood and betrayal elsewhere.
She thought someone came to hurt me. Not her. Me.
She stood in my quarters, heard footsteps outside the door, imagined violence and her first thought was for my safety.
She cares. The truth of it spreads through my chest, warm and aching. She cares whether I live or die. She cares enough that the possibility of my death put that look on her face, carved those lines around her mouth, kept her standing rigid in the center of my room instead of sleeping.
No one has cared whether I lived or died since my mother's blood stained the execution platform. Not like this. Not in the way that costs. I cannot lose her. I will not lose her.
“It was only my brother.” I cross the space between us and grip her waist, needing to confirm she is real and whole and unharmed. “He came to warn me about our father.”
Her brow furrows, the shift in her expression broadcasting the questions she wants to ask. Instead, I pull her against my chest and bury my face in her throat, breathing her in until my lungs hold nothing else.
She wraps her arms around my waist, her cheek pressing against my sternum where my hearts hammer. She's here. She's safe.
“What happened?” Her words come muffled against my shirt.
“Another enforcer attacked. Kash. He survived, but barely.” The words emerge between breaths that carry her warmth deeper into my body. “A maintenance worker saw the attacker fleeing the scene. I know who the traitor is.”
Maeve goes still against me.
“Vezra.” The name scrapes out of me. “The traitor is Vezra.” Bitterness coats my own voice, raw in a way that surprises me. I have swallowed harder truths than this, but this betrayal has lodged somewhere deep, and speaking it aloud makes the wound bleed fresh.
She processes this, her eyes moving across my face. “I'm sorry.”
Two words. Not the reaction I expected. Not questions about what happens next, not strategy, not the practical response a soldier might offer. She's sorry. Sorry that someone I trusted drove a knife into my back. Sorry that the faith I placed in Vezra, faith that doesn't come easily to me, that I've extended to perhaps a handful of people in my entire life, was used as a weapon against everything I've built.
She sees the betrayal beneath the facts. Understands what it costs me to have been so wrong about someone I let close.
This female floors me. Every time I think I've mapped the shape of her, she reveals a new depth I didn't anticipate.
I owe her another awful truth in return.
“My father will summon me. He knows what happened between us.” I tighten my grip on her waist, instinct fighting against the words I force myself to speak. “He'll demand I send you away. Remove you from our House.”
“Will you?”
