It is I who finally breaks the stillness.
"When I was translating for Drev," I say, and my voice sounds distant to my own ears, "he described the moment thepheromone wore off. How he woke up and did not know where he was or how he had gotten there. How his last clear memory was of being in his home. Then suddenly he was on an alien planet with years missing from his mind."
Cody is very still beside me.
"That is not so different from what happened to me," I continue. "Oh, the mechanism was different. I was never chemically controlled. But the disorientation – the theft of years – the waking up one day and realizing that the life you had is gone and you are someone else entirely…" I swallow hard. "I understood him. In my bones, Cody, I understood every word."
His arm comes around me, drawing me to his side. I lean into him and let my head rest on his shoulder.
"I keep thinking," I whisper, "what if no one had come? For me, I mean. What if the rescue had taken another year? Two years? Would I have become Joln? Silent, with vacant eyes, unable to find my way back?"
"But someone did come," Cody says. His voice is rough at the edges. "And you found your way back. You’re here. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known, and I’m not just saying that because you could probably beat me in a fight."
A startled laugh escapes me. Small and watery, but real.
"Probably?"
"Definitely. You could definitely beat me in a fight."
I turn my face into his neck and breathe him in. He smells like salt and sand and the particular musk that is uniquely his. Beneath it, I catch the scent of his emotions. The rich, steady undertone that I have come to associate with the way he feels about me. Not the sharp spike of desire or the sour note of worry, but something deeper. Something that smells like sun-warmed earth and spice.
But there is another layer beneath it tonight. Something I have scented before in fleeting moments and never been able toname. It is faint, tucked beneath the warmth like a stone at the bottom of a clear pool. Now, with my face pressed into his throat, I can finally identify it.
Grief. Old and heavy and carefully contained.
"Today was hard," I admit. It costs me to say it so plainly, but Cody has earned my honesty. "Seeing them reminded me of what I was. And part of me, the part that survived by refusing to feel anything, wanted to shut down. To retreat behind the walls and be the ice queen everyone expects."
"But you didn’t."
"No." I pull back enough to look at his face. The starlight catches the blue of his eyes, turning them luminous. "I forced myself to sit with them instead. I spoke their language and held their hands and tried to be the person I needed someone to be for me, all those years ago." My voice wavers. "First, Sator was that person for me; then you. And now I can be that for someone else. Because of him. Because of you."
Cody’s hand comes up to cradle my jaw. His thumb traces the ridge of my cheekbone, feather-light across my scales.
"You are the strongest person I have ever met," he says. "I'm so proud to call you fa'ren."
I catch his hand against my face and hold it there.
"Then let me be your fa'ren too." I say it quietly, but I do not look away. "Not just the person you protect, but the person you trust with the things you carry."
A flicker shifts behind his eyes before being quickly suppressed. "A'Vanti, I'm fine?—"
"You are not fine." I say it without accusation. I take a slow inhale, trying to collect my thoughts.
"Cody. You do this thing." I choose my words carefully. "You take care of everyone around you, and you turn your own pain into a joke, and you put yourself in danger as if your life is worth less than everyone else's. And I have been patient, because Iknow what it is to keep things locked away. But I am your mate now." I reach for his hand. "I need you to stop treating yourself as expendable. Because you are not expendable. Not to me."
I press his palm to my cheek. "You spent this entire day carrying the same weight I carried. And instead of sitting with any of it, you climbed onto a roof and built me a bed under the stars."
"Because you needed?—"
"Because it is easier to take care of me than to take care of yourself."
The words land. I see the impact in the way his whole body stills, in the way his jaw tightens briefly, in the way his eyes go bright and startled.
The silence stretches. Above us, the stars burn with their ancient, patient light.
When he finally speaks, his voice is rough. Stripped bare.
"I don't know how to stop." He says it like a confession. "I've been the person who shows up for everyone else since I was sixteen. Since Dad got sick and I was the oldest and someone had to hold everything together." His jaw works. "That last night, in the hospital, I was sitting with dad at three in the morning. Just me. Mom had fallen asleep in the chair, and my sisters were home. It was me and the machines and the sound of his breathing." His voice fractures. "And his breathing changed. You hear about that, the way it changes at the end, but nobody tells you what it actually sounds like. Nobody tells you that you'll spend the rest of your life hearing it in quiet moments. I woke up my mom, and we held his hand and talked to him. We told him we loved him. And then… he died, and it was awful, but I forced myself to keep holding it together because my family needed me. And then I joined the Air Force, and they gave me a whole new set of people to show up for, and I wasgoodat it, and it felt like enough." His hand presses to his eyes. "And then on Osti, Iwalked into that cell and I saw you, and you were… you looked so?—"
