“You should.”
I sit back on my heels, brushing dirt from my fingers in slow, deliberate motions, because if I stop moving entirely, I am fairly certain I will start shaking.
Run.
The thought is not his. Not anyone’s. It is instinct, raw and immediate.
I could.
The possibility flashes through me, sharp and dangerous, because I know the outer routes, the corridors that go unwatched at shift change, the patterns that could be slipped through if I moved carefully enough. I could leave. I could disappear. I could vanish into the kind of anonymity that swallows people whole.
And then my mother’s hands come to mind, worn but always gentle, my brother’s laugh too loud for the space he occupies, the fragile network of people who depend on the credits I bring in, the stability I maintain, the fact that I stay.
I close my eyes briefly.
Running would save me.
Running would destroy them.
“Don’t,” Skot says softly.
My eyes snap open. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t think about it like that,” he says, watching me too closely.
“Like what.”
“Like you can leave and it will end.”
A bitter sound escapes me before I can stop it. “You’re assuming I was considering it.”
“You were.”
I glare at him. “You’re insufferable.”
“And correct.”
I look away, my jaw tightening as the garden stretches out around us in careful symmetry, rows of cultivated life contained within stone boundaries where nothing grows wild and nothing escapes.
“I can’t leave,” I say finally.
“I know.”
“And even if I did,” I add, quieter now, “it wouldn’t matter.”
“No,” he agrees. “It would not.”
The honesty does nothing to comfort me.
A subtle shift in the air draws my attention, something almost imperceptible—the way the space tightens, the way awareness sharpens—and the guards at the far edge of the walkway straighten just slightly. Skot goes still beside me.
I don’t need to turn to know.
But I do anyway.
Verr stands at the edge of the garden path beneath the archway, half-shadowed, watching.
He does not announce himself. He does not need to. His presence settles over the space with a quiet certainty that assumes attention rather than demands it, and my pulse spikes even as I force my breathing to remain even, the scent of wet leaves and soil suddenly sharper, more intrusive.
