Page 142 of Reaper Said Mine

The door closes behind him, leaving Ursa and me alone in the old signal room with the dead relay banks and the Badlands burning beyond the glass.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

Then Ursa exhales slowly. “This got complicated.”

“It was complicated when you boarded my station.”

“It was professionally complicated then. Now it’s professionally complicated, politically explosive, emotionally dangerous, and apparently stew-adjacent.”

“Narra will be pleased you include her.”

“She terrifies me more than Gobold.”

“She is more competent.”

Ursa laughs, and the sound loosens something in my chest that the rumor map had tightened. I move closer, stopping before I crowd her. She notices. She always notices. Instead of stepping back, she reaches for my hand. Her fingers slide around two of mine, warm and impossibly small, and the bond between us settles like a flame cupped against wind.

“I’m not ashamed of this,” she says.

“No.”

“I’m afraid of what people will do with it.”

“Yes.”

“Those can both be true.”

“I am learning that many truths fit in the same room even when they hate one another.”

“That is either wisdom or exhaustion.”

“With you, often both.”

Her smile turns tender enough to hurt. “You said yes to that child.”

“I did.”

“You meant it.”

“Yes.”

She looks down at our joined hands. “I’m not ready to say it back like that.”

The confession enters quietly and cuts clean because she trusts me enough not to decorate it. I tighten my hand around hers only slightly, careful not to make a cage from comfort.

“I did not say it to demand echo.”

Her eyes lift. “I know.”

“Good.”

“But I feel…” She searches for the word and shakes her head once, frustrated. “A lot. I feel a lot, and I don’t have neat places to put it yet.”

“I have many ugly storage rooms.”

That surprises a laugh out of her. “Do not offer emotional storage rooms like that is romantic.”

“I am new to this.”