“I’ve been worse,” he says finally.
“Yeah,” I reply, pushing off the bench and stepping closer, slow enough not to crowd him but close enough that he can’t pretend I’m across the room. “But not like this.”
That lands.
I see it in the way his jaw tightens, not defensive, not angry—just aware.
“What did he do?” I ask.
Verr exhales slowly, dragging a hand back through his hair, the motion rougher than anything I’ve seen from him before. “Nothing unexpected,” he says, but there’s a flatness to it that doesn’t belong to him.
“That’s not an answer,” I say.
“It is,” he replies, a little sharper now, though it doesn’t carry much weight behind it. “I made a move. He stopped it.”
I tilt my head slightly, studying him, watching the way he stands instead of just listening to what he says.
“No,” I say after a second. “He didn’t just stop it.”
Verr looks at me again, this time more directly.
“What’s the difference?” he asks.
“The difference,” I say, stepping in closer, lowering my voice just enough that it pulls his focus on whether he wants it to or not, “is that you’re standing like someone who lost more than a fight.”
That hits.
Clean.
He doesn’t respond right away, and I let the silence sit there, not pushing, not filling it, just letting him feel it instead of talking around it.
“He’s been ahead of me the entire time,” he says finally, the words quiet, like he’s still trying to contain them.
“Yeah,” I reply.
That earns a flicker of something from him—brief, sharp.
“That’s it?” he asks. “That’s your response?”
“What do you want me to say?” I ask, folding my arms loosely as I lean my shoulder against the wall beside him. “That it’s not true?”
His jaw tightens again.
“No.”
“Good,” I say. “Because it is.”
He looks away.
Not avoiding.
Processing.
I let my gaze drift past him toward the door, tracking the faint echo of movement beyond it, the pattern of guard rotations I’ve been piecing together since they threw me in here. The timing hasn’t changed. The structure hasn’t shifted. That tells me something important.
Maltos isn’t worried.
Not yet.
