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His brow tightens. “Was that distress?”

“That was me handling joy badly under combat conditions.”

“Ah.”

“I love you too, obviously.”

His mouth curves, faint but real. “Obviously?”

“I kissed you in front of an immortal linguist, a furious mechanic, an extremist priestess, and the complete history of reality’s undignified origin. I was not being subtle.”

“No,” he says. “You were not.”

Another blast hits the entrance. This one throws enough force through the terrace that I stagger into him. Ghar catches me with both arms. For a second, I am pressed against his chest, feeling the heat of him through armor, the powerful rise and fall of his breathing, and the almost imperceptible tremor moving through him now that he has stopped pretending control means feeling nothing.

The intimacy of it slows the terror.

Not because danger disappears. It does not. Choir forces are still advancing. Rolaev is still working her destruction key against Sira’s stabilizing field. Brakk is shouting at the escape anchor as if personal abuse improves engineering outcomes. The archive is still deciding whether to preserve, erase, or fling us into some pre-stable garbage dimension with bad lighting.

But inside Ghar’s arms, I finally stop stepping backward from what I feel.

I let my forehead rest against the center of his chest. “I don’t want fear to be the thing that makes us honest.”

His hand settles at the back of my head. “Then we are honest now, before fear can claim credit.”

I laugh shakily. “That is a very Vakutan way to phrase emotional growth.”

“I am new to this.”

“You’re doing alarmingly well.”

“I am terrified.”

The confession is quiet. No rigid control. No noble posture. Just truth.

I lift my head. “Of me?”

“Of losing you. Of failing you. Of surviving without the beliefs that once told me what survival meant.” His hand brushes a curl back from my face with such carefulness that my heart aches. “But not of loving you.”

My defenses, already in poor condition, simply give up.

I rise on my toes and kiss him again, slower this time despite the chaos. The kiss is not panic dressed as passion. It is not the bond dragging us together by the bloodstream. It is a deliberate meeting in the narrow space between disaster and decision. His mouth is warm, his breath uneven, and his hand at my waist holds me like I am both precious and fully capable of standing on my own. I taste salt from my own tears, smoke from the chamber, and the faint copper tang of blood where he must have bitten his tongue earlier. It should be ugly. It is not. It is ours.

He kisses me with restraint, but not distance. His tenderness is a revelation more intimate than hunger. Every careful movement says he is choosing not to take refuge in instinct, choosing to be present, choosing to let me feel the truth of him without being overwhelmed by it. I answer in kind, slowing myself when fear wants urgency, opening to the moment instead of using it as proof, promise, or escape.

When we part, I am crying openly.

I hate crying openly, as a general policy.

Ghar touches one tear with his thumb. “Should I be concerned?”

“Yes, but not about this.”

“That is confusing.”

“Welcome to me.”

“I chose this.”