“That is not your concern.”
“It is if your judgment is compromised.”
My jaw tightens. The cruiser hums around us, engines adjusting vector as we skirt the outer rim of a debris field. I feel the shift in my knees, subtle but constant.
“My judgment,” I say carefully, “is not compromised.”
Kael studies my face with an intensity that makes it difficult to breathe evenly. He is not towering over me; he has deliberately angled himself so that our eye level is nearly even. That courtesy unsettles me more than looming would.
“You assisted my escape based on incomplete analysis,” he says, not accusing, simply stating fact.
The words strike with clean precision.
“I am aware of that,” I reply, my voice lower now. “You do not need to narrate my mistakes back to me.”
“I do not consider it a mistake.”
“That is because you survived it.”
His expression shifts—subtle, almost imperceptible—but I see it. A tightening at the corner of his mouth. A fractional narrowing of his eyes.
“You believe I am minimizing your risk,” he says.
“I believe,” I answer, stepping away from the table and toward the viewport, “that I made a call under pressure and now we are living with the consequences.”
The stars beyond the reinforced glass are cold and distant. Nebula clouds smear violet across the dark. The cruiser’s shields shimmer faintly against particulate debris.
Behind me, I hear him move. Not toward me. Around the table, recalibrating the display again.
“They selected my clan baseline intentionally,” Kael says, returning us to the evidence. “The trough variance is clipped. Organic resonance does not stabilize so cleanly.”
“I know that,” I reply. I press my palm against the viewport glass, grounding myself in the chill of it. “They wanted the accusation airtight.”
“They wanted outrage.”
“They wanted mobilization.”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes briefly and let the pattern settle in my mind. Admiral Valen’s rhetoric. The fleet readiness percentages rising almost before the smoke cleared. The speed of narrative formation.
“They needed me to validate it,” I say quietly.
Kael does not answer immediately. I turn back toward him.
“They needed League neutrality to harden the claim,” I continue, crossing the room again. “An intelligence aide attached to arbitration. Someone who would not be dismissed as partisan.”
His gaze sharpens. “And did you validate it?”
“I didn’t refute it publicly.”
“You questioned it privately.”
“That is not the same thing.”
He steps closer, and the space between us contracts. I can feel the heat from his skin now, the faint scent of iron and something warmer that I have begun to associate with him specifically.
“You are holding yourself solely responsible for systemic momentum,” he says.
