It's not a question. I don't answer it like one.
"I'll handle Mother."
The certainty in my voice surprises us both. Ky knows what I'm capable of—he's watched me navigate Consortium politics since childhood, seen me calculate angles and leverage points the way other people breathe. But this is different. This isn't about political maneuvering or strategic positioning. This is about choosing something for myself and being willing to burn down the structures that built me to get it.
"No one handles Mother," Ky says, and there's something almost sad in his tone. Something that acknowledges he'swatching his sister do the one thing their mother trained her never to do: deviate from the plan.
"First time for everything," I reply.
He doesn't argue, which somehow makes it worse. His acceptance of my stubbornness is more damaging than any objection could be, it means he believes me, which means he's already calculating what my choice will cost, already mourning what I'll have to sacrifice to keep this. To keep Ethan. To keep the first real thing I've ever chosen for myself instead of for utility.
"Then I'll survive her. I've done it before."
Ky exhales. Reaches over and squeezes my wrist once, a quick pressure that says everything he won't put into words. Then he stands and leaves me alone with the transit charts and the cold geometric certainty that my mother already knows exactly what I've become, and she's preparing the room accordingly.
I findEthan in our quarters, packing. Or rather, standing in front of an open travel case with nothing in it, staring at the interior as though it contains the answer to a question he hasn't asked yet.
"Your family trained you to destroy people like me," he says without turning around. "Now you're bringing me home as a husband."
I lean against the door frame. Watch the line of his shoulders, the way his hands hang at his sides, the controlled stillness that I'm learning to distinguish from genuine calm. He's afraid. Not in the operatic sense, not the kind of fear that announces itself. The quiet kind. The kind that sits in the gut and does its work without permission.
"Scared?"
"Terrified." He turns, and his smile is genuine. Not the calibrated version he wears for negotiations, not the careful warmth he deploys for diplomacy. This one reaches his eyes and sits there, undefended. "But I've walked into worse rooms."
"My mother's meeting room might change your mind about that."
"I'm looking forward to finding out."
He's lying. I can tell because I've spent weeks learning the difference between Ethan performing and Ethan speaking, and the distinction lives in the small muscles around his eyes, the ones that don't obey the same commands as the rest of his face. He's not looking forward to anything about this. But he's willing to walk into it beside me, and that willingness is its own kind of courage, the kind that doesn't announce itself.
I push off the door frame. Cross the room. He watches me come the way he always does, with that particular attention that used to feel like surveillance and now feels like something else, something I want to examine less than I want to feel.
"Before we go," I say. "Before we enter my mother's territory and become whatever version of ourselves the Council needs to see."
"Yes?"
"I need you to understand something."
His expression shifts. Open. Waiting.
I put my hand on his chest. Feel his heart rate spike beneath my palm, the involuntary honesty of a body that can't lie as effectively as the mind that drives it.
"Get on your knees."
He goes down.
Not slowly, not with the theatrical resistance that would let him pretend this is a negotiation. He drops. The sound of hisknees hitting the floor of our quarters is a dull, solid thing, absorbed by the thin regulation carpet and the recycled hum of station air, and the look on his face when he tilts it up toward me is something I want to study for the rest of my life.
Not submission. Recognition. He knows what this is. He knows what I need it to be, and he's giving it to me without the safety net of pretense, without the framework of orders or obligations or strategic justifications.
I look down at him. My husband. The Empri operative who manipulated a woman into loving him for a decade and confessed it like a man opening a vein. The man who walked into the Torrence brothers' judgment and took it without defense. The man who shook in my arms last night and didn't hide it.
On his knees. For me.
"This isn't forgiveness for Elissa," I say. I thread my fingers into his hair. Grip. Not gently. His chin tips back further, throat exposed, and the sound he makes is barely a sound at all, just air leaving his lungs in a way that carries more honesty than anything he's ever said with words. "I don't forgive that. I'm not sure I ever will."
"I know."
