“So you decided.”
“Yes,” he said.
Then, softer—because he could not help it, because the sight of her blood had pulled something brutal and old to the surface—“Because I have watched people bleed out in minutes, and pretend it was nothing until it was too late. I will not watch that happen to you and call it discipline.”
Her gaze sharpened. “That is not my fault.”
“No.” He looked up at her. “But it will become your problem if you insist on proving bravery by refusing aid.”
Eleanor’s cheeks flushed—anger, not embarrassment. “Do not lecture me as though you are my father.”
Graham stood, the room felling suddenly smaller.
He moved to the window and peered through the slats, scanning the street for movement. He saw only rain, empty cobbles, and, farther off, the broken carriage still abandoned under the lamp’s glow.
“You are angry,” he said without turning.
“I am furious,” Eleanor corrected. “Because you keep placing yourself between me and everything that happens. As though my role is to survive and document, not to act.”
Graham’s grip tightened on the curtain. “You are not a weapon.”
“And you are?”
He turned then, and the look in his eyes made her breath catch.
“I am trained,” he said. “Which means I know exactly what it costs when people stumble into this world without armor.”
Eleanor pushed to her feet, one hand braced on the chair for balance. “And I know exactly what it costs to be treated like a child. I will not have my choices made for me.”
“You do not understand what happens to people whose names appear in cipher,” Graham said. “What happens to those with the skill to decode ciphers.”
“Then teach me,” Eleanor snapped. “Or let me learn by living it. But do not stand there and decide what I am allowed to risk.”
Graham took a step toward her, then stopped, as if he were hauling himself back from a cliff. “You are injured,” he said.
“I am alive,” she countered. “And I am not leaving this to you alone.”
His jaw flexed. “If you go out again, they will kill you.”
“Then we make sure they do not,” Eleanor said, her cold, fearless logic wrapped around sheer stubbornness.
Graham’s restraint cracked.
He closed the distance in two strides, took her by the shoulders, and held her as though he could keep the entire world from touching her if he simply refused to let go.
“Do you even know,” he said, voice rougher than before, “what it costs to put a name into a list like that?”
Eleanor’s breath trembled. “Do you know what it costs to erase one?”
Relief, fury, longing—too much emotion for a man built on control—flickered across his face.
His hands tightened.
Eleanor should have told him to let go.
Instead she stood perfectly still, as if daring him to choose what he would do with the truth between them.
His mouth met hers.
