It’s personal. And it’s killing me.
She doesn’t look at me when she speaks. She used to, even when she was furious, even when she was throwing my own words back at me. She’d hold my gaze with that steady, unflinching heat that made every argument feel like a negotiation conducted at close range. Now, her eyes go to Armen, or to the middle distance, or to her hands. Anywhere but me.
She angles her body away from mine at the table. It’s subtle, maybe a five-degree rotation that most people wouldn’t notice. But I do. She faces Rogue on her left, or Armen at the head, and I’m sitting to her right occupying the same chair I’ve always occupied, except the space between us is massive, filled with her contempt.
This morning, she laughed at something Rogue said. I don’t know what it was. Some remark at breakfast, delivered withthat loose, perfect timing Rogue has, his charming ability to say something at exactly the right moment with exactly the right weight to make someone feel good. Armen was eating, and Mara was across the table, still new enough to watch everything with wide, curious eyes.
Vi’s laugh wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t the careful, managed type of communication she’s been giving me. It was a real laugh, short, surprised, pulled out of her before she could decide whether to let it rip. Her head tipped back, her mouth opened, and the sound filled the room.
It hit me in a place exposed, somewhere behind my breastbone. Left of center, I’m pretty sure. A dull sensation I don’t have a useful name for. It’s not the pain, anger, or clean reactions I’m used to, but something messier. Something that stuck in my throat for the rest of the meal and is sitting there now, like a big lump of heartburn, while I walk the east wing checking access points, a mindless, tedious task that’s also strangely calming.
Not much goes on in this area of the Rot at this time of day. Most of the traffic flows through the central concourse and the residential corridors. Out here, past the work hubs, the Rot thins out. The storefronts are empty, gates half down, display windows stripped, ceiling tiles hanging at angles where water damage has done its damage. A bird’s nest sits in the exposed ductwork above the old shoe store. I can hear movement inside it. Small, scratching, alive in a place built for commerce and now used for neither commerce nor living. Not officially, anyway.
I check the Rot access points. Doors, gates, service corridors. Everything is where it should be. Nothing has changed since my last walk-through. The Rot is stable. It’s secure. Things are as they should be.
For the most part.
I think about four days ago when Vi’s face tipped up toward mine, her hands flat on my chest, the distance between her mouth and mine getting smaller by the second. How her heartbeat pounded under my awareness, accelerating, warming, opening, and the knowledge, absolute and undeniable, that if I’d stayed in that moment two seconds longer, I would have kissed her.
Instead, I stepped back.
It was the correct decision, at least at the time. Because kissing Vi in a corridor while she’s raw with grief and anger would have exploited her vulnerability, and I don’t do that. There’s a line there that’s always been there.
Except.
Except that her hands were on my chest by choice. Her face was tilted up by choice. The charge between us wasn’t manufactured or coerced or born from the power imbalance that structures everything inside the Rot. It was mutual. And I walked away from it because walking away is what I do. Control the variable. Reduce the exposure. Protect the Rot.
Protect the Rot. That’s what I told her I was doing.I’m trying to protect you.And I meant it. I meant every word.
But standing in an empty corridor in the east wing, checking locks that don’t need checking, I have to ask myself whether what I’m protecting is hers or mine.
Vi is in the work hub when I pass. I see her through the open gate in the sorting station, hands moving, head down. Mara is beside her. They’re talking in low voices, close together, and Vi is almost smiling at something Mara said. Almost. The ghost of the real thing, the version she gives to everyone except me.
She doesn’t look up as I pass.
I keep walking.
The distance between us is operational. Healthy. She asked for something dangerous and I said no, and she’s adjustingto the boundary. This is how it works. This is how it should work. Clear lines. Clean decisions. Consequences accepted and absorbed.
I almost believe it.
Almost.
22
STING
It happensat the supply closet.
Not in a corridor. Not in a doorway, but the damn supply closet on the second floor, where cleaning materials and spare junk are stored in a room barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side. I’m coming out. She’s going in. And the doorframe is narrow enough that one of us has to yield.
Neither of us does.
I see her a half second before we reach the threshold. She’s carrying an empty crate, probably headed in for fabric. Mara needs bedding, now that they’re setting up a proper space for her. Vi’s eyes come up and find me and for a fraction of a second, I see the real reaction, the unmanaged one, before the polite mask slides into place.
But it doesn’t disappear all the way.
She stops in the doorframe. I’m already there, one step away, my shoulder angled toward the gap. The space between us contracts to about eight inches. The crate in her hands is pressed against her stomach and the edge of it grazes my forearm.
