“I said route-runner ration.”
“That is one.”
“It’s too much.”
“It is not enough.”
Her fingers curl.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“No,” I say. “The journey does.”
“Convenient, how everything dangerous agrees with you,” she says, her eyes flashing.
“Not everything.”
“What doesn’t?” she asks.
I look at the ration. Then at her.
“You.”
Silence. The words were not meant to be anything more than true. They became something else anyway.
Her breath catches. Only slightly. Enough. I feel it in my own chest like pressure before a collapse. She looks away first, but not fast enough to hide the color along her cheekbones.
“This is not your concern,” she says.
“You are right.”
Her gaze snaps back to mine.
“That was not an invitation to agree with me.”
“You are not my concern because I choose it,” I say. Her body stills. I should stop. I do not. “You are my concern because if you fall, the mission fails. If your thoughts slow, the path fails. If hunger eats your judgment, the zemlja will hear the mistake before either of us survives it.”
The heat in her eyes dims. Disappointment. I do not understand it until it is too late. For a moment, she thought I meant something else.
Fool.
Me, not her. I look away, jaw tight.
“I need you alive,” I say. “That is all I meant.”
A lie. Not all, but it is the only truth safe enough to give her. She studies me for a long breath. Then she picks up the dried meat. Not all of it, of course. She tears it in half. I close my eyes to keep the growl behind my teeth where it belongs. When I open them, she is watching.
“You have an opinion?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Swallow it.”
“I would rather you swallow the food.”
Her mouth twitches. Small. Unwilling. There.
Something eases in my chest, just enough to be dangerous. She eats the smaller half. Slowly. Angrily. As if chewing is an act of war. I take the other half before she can put it away and hold it out again. She narrows her eyes.
