Still, nothing.
I clench my fists. My nails bite my palms. I feel the heat rising up my neck, like every minute I spent thinking he was gone has finally caught fire andnowit wants blood.
“You’re not going to speak?” I ask. “After two years? After the explosion, the silence, the broadcasts, the funerals?”
He shifts, just barely. His head tilts, like I’m some ancient dialect he’s trying to translate with broken tools.
“I had to identify pieces of your ship,” I hiss. “Charred metal. Burnt circuitry. They handed me a box. A goddamnbox.And I told them it couldn’t be you. I told them you were harder to kill than that.”
Nothing.
“But I believed it anyway. Igrieved.I rebuilt everything from scratch. ForPyramus.For me.”
Silence.
“Don’t juststand there!”
I lunge forward, hands trembling. “You let me think you weredead!”
He flinches—barely. But it’s there. A pulse. A shift. Like the words finally pierce the surface of whatever shield he’s wearing over that heart of his.
When he speaks, it’s low. Rough. Like it got dragged through gravel just to make it out.
“You let me think you weresafe.”
He steps closer now. One measured stride. Not aggressive. Not soft. Just deliberate.
“I didn’t contact you,” he says, voice tight with control, “because the second I did, you became a target. Not just for every syndicate that wants my head, but for every mistake I ever made.”
“I could’ve handled it?—”
“No, you couldn’t,” he snaps. “You had ourson.”
The word drops between us like a live wire. My skin burns with it. Our son.
He knows.
Of course he does. He saw the boy’s face. The truth in his posture. The fire in his defiance.
I don’t correct him.
I don’t have to.
He runs a hand down his face, weary now. “You think I don’t relive it? Every day? Waking up in that wreckage? Crawling through dead metal and knowing if I called you, it would just bring that to your doorstep?”
I shake my head. “So you what—chose to die instead?”
“I chose to stayaway.Until I could keep you safe.”
“Newsflash,” I spit, “youdidn’t.You walked onto that station, and within two minutes, my kid was almost trampled and half a gala went up in smoke.”
“That wasn’t me,” he growls. “That was yoursecurity.”
I pace, hands in my hair, fury scraping through my veins like glass. “This isn’t about who fired first. This is about you disappearing. About me carrying the weight of a ghost while trying to raise a kid who asks every night why he doesn’t have a dad.”
Garokk looks away.
Good.
