Lonari’s voice goes rough. “Venn chose his position.”
“And I forced the war!” I snap back.
Silence snaps tight between us.
The casino’s muffled music pulses faintly through the floor, obscene and distant.
Lonari stares at me for a long moment. Then he says, “You didn’t force the war. You exposed it.”
I swallow hard. My eyes sting again.
“That’s a distinction,” I whisper, “that doesn’t bring him back.”
“No,” Lonari agrees.
He shifts closer, and the mattress dips under his weight. He doesn’t touch me yet. He waits.
Then he speaks, quiet, blunt. “You want a world where truth is free. Where people don’t die for it.”
My throat tightens. I nod.
“That world doesn’t exist,” he says.
I flinch as if he struck me.
Lonari continues, voice steady, unflinching. “Not here. Not in the Alliance. Not in the IHC. Not in Kaijen. The truth costs. It always has.”
I swallow. “Then why keep paying?”
His eyes lock onto mine. “Because the alternative is slavery.”
The word lands with weight. It echoes something he said to Fyr—survival without autonomy is slavery with better lighting.
I feel it settle into my bones.
Lonari’s voice softens just a notch. “I’m going to keep choosing the hard path. Not because it’s noble. Because it’s mine. But you—” He pauses. “You have to stop acting like you’re expendable. Like the only way you’re allowed to exist is if you’re useful.”
My lips part. I try to make a joke. I can’t.
“I don’t know how,” I whisper.
Lonari studies me, then reaches out—slowly, like he’s giving me every chance to recoil—and cups the side of my face with his hand.
His palm is warm. Rough in places. Steady.
The contact makes my lungs forget what they’re doing.
“You start,” he says, “by letting someone hold you without you turning it into a transaction.”
My throat tightens painfully. “That’s… not my specialty.”
He huffs, almost a laugh. “I noticed.”
I close my eyes for a second, leaning into his hand before I can stop myself.
When I open them again, I’m too close to him.
Close enough to see the small tension at the corner of his mouth, the controlled restraint in the way he breathes.
