Her jaw tightens. “Do not what?”
“Do not offer me what fear is trying to steal from both of us.”
Her expression changes. Pain first. Then understanding. Then something like awe, which I do not deserve.
“I am not offering the bond,” she says.
“No.”
“I am telling you I am still me.”
My breath leaves. The red goes quiet for half a heartbeat. Not gone. Listening.
Sera keeps her fingers hooked around mine. “I am hurt. I am scared. I am angry. I am probably making terrible decisions. But I am still me.”
“Yes.”
“And I am choosing to ask you not to leave me alone in this passage.”
That breaks me in a place the Bijass cannot reach. I step closer. Not too close. Close enough that my shadow covers the white-gray line crawling along the floor.
“I will not leave you.”
“I know.”
“No.” I lower myself to one knee in front of her, careful, deliberate, my hands open on my thighs. “Hear me clearly. I will not claim you here. I will not take the bond because I fear losing you. I will not let the Bijass call fear love and make me believe it.”
Her mouth trembles. Only once.
“I hate you are so good at that,” she whispers.
“At what?”
“Making me feel safe when everything is trying to kill us.”
I cannot answer that. Not without saying the word love. Not yet. Maybe not until it can stand in clean air.
Instead, I reach slowly for her bandaged arm. “May I?”
She looks at my hand. Then nods.
“Yes.”
I unwrap only enough to check the wound. The glow beneath the cloth is brighter, but the blood flow has slowed. The cut is angry and cold-edged, with blue light pulsing along the skin around it. Not infection. Not healing either.
Resonance. The system marked her. Or the epis have. Or the unfinished bond changed how her blood answered. Too many possibilities. All dangerous.
“We need Rosalind,” Sera says.
“Yes.”
“And Ila.”
“Yes.”
“And probably someone to keep Adran out of the room.”
“Yes.”
