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Not dramatically. Nothing he'd have caught with his eyes in the dark, no sharp breath, no sound at all. But his palm was still resting against my spine, and whatever he felt there, made his hand still completely, the slow stroke breaking off mid-motion.

"You don't have to," he said, quiet, no hurt in it at all. "If you don't want to."

The offer sat there the same way his earlier one had, no weight behind it, no expectation leaning on either side of it. That was, I was starting to understand, simply how he asked for things. Open hands. Nothing owed. He'd let this go as easily as he'd let go of anything else tonight, and that made the telling him easier instead of harder.

I could have let it go. He wouldn't have pushed. That was exactly why I didn't let it go.

"I made him," I said. "By accident. I was ten."

Ashter shifted against me, rolling until his head came to rest heavy near my chest, like he already knew which story this was before I'd finished the first sentence.

The arm already wrapped around my waist tightened slightly, and Halver's fingers found the ridge between his ears without needing to look.

His other hand settled back against my spine, still now, just present, and I found the rest of the words easier to reach with that steady weight anchoring me to the moment instead of whatever memory I was about to walk back into.

"I was in a supervised exercise. Multiple specimens, all dying at once, and I was supposed to choose which ones I could actually save instead of trying for all of them. It was meant to teach restraint. Instead it taught me exactly how far past restraint I could push if nobody stopped me in time." I kept my eyes on the dark canvas above us rather than his face.

"I didn't listen. I kept reaching. Past what I could hold, past what anyone in that room expected a child my age to be capable of holding. And somewhere in the middle of trying to save everything, all of it, whatever was left of those creatures started coming together into something that hadn't been any of them to begin with. I didn't do it on purpose. I don't think I even understood what was happening until it had already happened. One moment I was pouring everything I had into three dying things. Next there was one thing left, and it was breathing, and it was looking at me like it already knew exactly who I was."

"Ashter."

"Ashter." My throat had gone tight around the name in a way it usually didn't. "Part of him is me. Whatever I was pouring into that room to keep those things alive, some of it didn't come back out. I don't fully understand the mechanics of it even now. Nobody does. There's no one else in the world who's ever done what I did that day, no record of it happening before, nothing in any text Dannian ever showed me afterward. Just me, and a room full of dead things, and one small, warm creature curled in the wreckage who apparently intended to stay."

Halver didn't say anything right away. His thumb moved once against my skin, small, grounding, and I was grateful for it in a way I didn't have good words for.

"They wanted to destroy him," My voice softened, remembering.

"After. Some of the Masters. He wasn't supposed to exist, and Ashter existing outside a controlled specimen room frightened people who liked things sorted into categories they understood. I fought them on it for months. I was ten years old, standing in rooms full of grown men who outranked everyone I'd ever met, fighting for the right to keep something I'd made without meaning to make it."

"You won."

"I won because separating us nearly killed us both after a few days the one time they actually tried it. Not because anyone decided I was right. I still don't know if any of them ever decided that."

I finally turned enough to look at him, close in the dark, his eyes steady on mine the way they always were, holding the same quiet patience his hands had carried all night.

"That's when I decided. Never again. Whatever I could do, however far my ability could reach, I would never make life again, and I would never change what something already was just because I had the power to. Janus' wife Ussari taught me the rest of it later, the piece about asking instead of assuming, but that day is where it actually started. Alive is supposed to stay whatever kind of alive it already chose to be. Nobody gets to decide otherwise. Not even me. Especially not me."

He was quiet for a moment, turning that over the way he turned everything, like he wanted to be certain he understood all of it before he said anything back.

"Is that why you always ask," he said. "Before you heal anyone. Even when it's obvious we want it."

"Yes."

"Even me."

"Especially you."

Something eased in his chest, close enough against mine that I felt it happen before I heard it in his breathing. He just held on a little tighter, like the story had cost me something and he intended to make sure I didn't have to carry the weight of having told it alone.

"Thank you," he said, eventually. "For telling me."

"You asked."

"People ask you things all the time. You don't usually answer like that."

He was right, and we both knew it, and I let the quiet after that sit exactly as heavy as it deserved to be.

I thought about how easily I could have said nothing. How for years the answer to that exact question had been silence, or a deflection, or some careful half version of the truth that gave nothing away that could later be used against me. Halver hadn't earned the full version through any particular trick or persistence. He'd simply asked, and meant it, and left the door open for me to walk back out of it if I wanted to.