Page 321 of Reaper Said Mine

The bond warms between us.

“What will you call it?”

“Open Signal.”

I let the words settle.

Open Signal.

A name built like a promise.

“I like it.”

Her brows rise. “No critique?”

“I am capable of refinement.”

“You absolutely are not.”

“I refined my urge to invade IHC into only imagining it.”

“That is not refinement. That is restraint.”

“Another itchy virtue.”

She laughs softly, and the sound moves through the ache in me like clean water.

Below us, the market breathes. Not easily. Not fully. But it breathes.

I place one hand on the rail beside hers. “You will be powerful.”

She snorts. “I’ll be broke for a while first.”

“I have tariffs.”

“I am not funding my independent news network with Reaper warlord tariff money.”

“Neutral territorial administrator tariff money.”

“Still no.”

“You wound me.”

“You’ll live.”

I look at the market again. “Yes.”

The word carries more than either of us jokes about.

I will live.

She will live.

My people will live.

Not all of them. Never all. The dead remain, stubborn and beloved, refusing to be erased by treaties or brighter maps. But enough survive to make the future possible, and I have learned not to despise possible simply because it arrives smaller than revenge once promised.

Ursa’s hand slides over mine.