"I know." His hand dropped to her shoulder. "That is not going to work for me. Going forward."
She looked up at him. "You're going to have to get used to the fact that I don't always lead with the bad news."
"And you're going to have to get used to the fact that I need to know when you're hurt." His voice was even. Not angry anymore. Just certain. "That is not negotiable, Adryel."
She held his gaze for a moment. Something settling in her chest that she didn't quite have a word for yet.
"Okay," she said.
Just that. Okay.
He looked slightly surprised. Like he'd expected more of a fight.
She smiled. "Don't get used to it."
He exhaled something that was almost a laugh. His hand moved to the pendant at his chest — that large, ornate family crest that she'd noticed the moment she'd seen him, heavy and significant against his skin. He lifted it over his head. He held it out to her.
She looked at it. Then at him. "You don't have to?—"
"I know." He took her hand and folded her fingers around it. "But the chip belongs with you. And so does this." His fingers stayed over hers for a moment. "When you're ready to carry it again."
She looked down at the pendant in her hand. The ornate metalwork. The place where she'd hidden the most dangerous thing she owned and handed it to someone she'd known less than a week.
Someone who'd kept it safe without even knowing he was doing it.
She closed her fingers around it.
"I think I'm ready," she said.
He watched her for a moment, something moving behind his eyes that she was only just learning to read.
"You know," he said. "When I agreed to Khalzin's program, I told myself it was just a favor. Nothing personal."
"I remember. You mentioned that."
"I was wrong."
She looked up at him.
"It was the most personal thing I have ever done," he said. "And I did not know it yet." He reached out and touched the pendant, still in her hand. "I know it now."
She didn't have a smart answer for that. For once in her life, she didn't reach for one.
Instead she reached for him.
He pulled her in carefully, mindful of her side, and she let herself be held in the harsh white light of the refinery medical bay, the antiseptic smell and the distant grind of the ore processing all around them.
It wasn't romantic.
It was real.
Which, she was beginning to understand, was better.
EPILOGUE
DHOMHES
Dhomhes had learned a long time ago that loose security was often more useful than tight security.
