“Will she like me?”
“She’ll respect you. Same thing with Bronwen.”
“Keep going.”
“Zarek. Big. Dangerous. His mate is Bronwen.” Kallum’s mouth curved. “She’s... a lot. Cheerful about violence. You’ll either love her or be terrified of her.”
“Can I be both?”
“Most people are.” His eyes drifted. Came back. “Varrick handles tech. Sabine is his. Then Brevan. The talker. Carys. She has a cat. Cybernetic. It hates everyone.”
“A cat.”
“Flinx. Don’t try to pet it.”
I filed that away. A team. A family he’d built over years. People who would be waiting when we arrived.
“They’ll accept you,” Kallum said. Like he’d heard the question I hadn’t asked. “You’re Torek’s student. That means something.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then they’ll accept you because you’re mine.” His hand found mine again. “They understand that.”
His eyes closed. His hand went slack in mine.
“Kallum?”
Breathing. Slow, but steady. He’d slipped under again.
I satwith him in the blue-violet light of hyperspace and held his hand and tried not to count his breaths.
He said something. Low, broken. I leaned closer.
“...could let go.”
“What?”
His eyes moved behind closed lids. Dreaming, or somewhere between dreaming and consciousness. “Easy. Just let go. Stop holding on.”
My grip tightened on his hand. “Don’t you dare.”
“Not going to.” His voice was barely a whisper. His fingers curled around mine, weak but deliberate. “Choosing this. Choosing to come back.”
“To the mission?”
“To you.” He forced his eyes open until they found me and held on, red and fever-glazed, like I was the only thing keeping the room from spinning. “A life of disappearing. Could do it one more time. Just... fade out. I know how.”
“Kallum.”
“But I don’t want to.” His thumb moved against my palm. One slow stroke. “First time I haven’t wanted to. So I’m staying.”
His eyes closed again. His breathing evened out. But his hand held mine, and his grip didn’t loosen.
I sat there in the dark and the hum of the engines and realized he hadn’t said Ilove you. He’d said something harder. He’d saidI’m choosing this.
Not swept up. Not overwhelmed. A decision made while dying, by a man who’d spent his whole life deciding to vanish, who was now deciding not to.
When he told me he loved me later, I’d already know it was true. Because I’d heard him choose it first.
