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“I’ve known for a while,” she said. “I’ve been maintaining wards against Garrett Mercer. I’ve sat in briefings where Sloane explained his patterns. I’ve watched her when his name comes up.” She met his eyes. “You didn’t need to tell me. But I’m glad you did.”

“Does it change anything?”

“It changes what I understand. It doesn’t erase what it felt like.” She took a breath. “Those weeks, Chris. Cold eggs in an empty hall with conversations dying when I walked through the door. I know why she did it now. Knowing doesn’t make the memory of it smaller.”

“I’m not asking you to shrink it.”

“Then what are you asking?”

He looked at Elianna. She’d abandoned the spoon for her own hand, examining each finger with a concentration that suggested she’d only recently discovered they existed.

“I want to be with her,” he said. “I’m finished pretending I don’t.”

Caitlynn sat back.

“She keeps leaving,” he said. “We get close, she opens up, I can see her right there in front of me with every wall down. Then she turns it off, puts her clothes on, walks out. Tonight she told me to talk to Viktor about drainage corridors. Thirty seconds after I’d been inside her.”

His sister’s mouth pulled sideways, bitten back, careful not to wake the baby. “Moving past all of the unasked-for information I just received. That does sound like Sloane.”

“It’s maddening.”

“It’s what surviving looks like when you’ve never seen another version of it.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “When Kahn and I first shared a bed, I spent a month sleeping on the edge of the mattress. I’d wait until he fell asleep, then inch toward the side until I was half hanging off. One night I fell. Hit the floor. He looked down at me and said, ‘The bed is wide enough for two people, Caitlynn.’ I told him the bed was fine; the problem was him.”

“Was it?”

“The problem was that I’d never been safe enough to sleep next to anyone. My body didn’t know how to stop bracing.” She turned the mug again. “Kahn didn’t pull me to his side. He didn’t mention it in the morning. He just kept sleeping in the same bed, night after night, without making me feel stupid for hanging off the edge. Six weeks later, I woke up in the middle with his arm over me. I hadn’t noticed moving.”

Chris watched his sister. Freckles, green eyes, the same stubborn mouth their mother had carried through three foster placements before the system broke her. Caitlynn had survived her own version of a locked house. She understood Sloane’s architecture because she’d built one of her own, and dismantled it, brick by brick, with Kahn on the other side holding steady.

“So I wait,” he said.

“You can’t rush a body out of survival mode. It’s been keeping her alive for years. It’s good at its job. It doesn’t stop just because the danger has changed shape.” She held his eyes. “But there’s a part I left out last time. You have to let her see you, too. Not the version who stands guard and holds every door open. The version who’s scared. Who doesn’t know what he’s doing. She’s been protecting herself since she was six years old. She doesn’t need a protector. She needs a person who’ll stand as exposed as she is and refuse to look away.”

Elianna made a soft sound against Chris’s chest. Her eyes had closed. Her weight settled, warm, her breathing shallow with sleep.

“She’ll run again,” Caitlynn said. “Probably more than once. Every time she does, you’ll want to take it personally. Don’t. It will feel like rejection. It isn’t. She’s running from how good it feels to stop running, because she doesn’t believe she gets to keep that yet.”

The candle guttered. Caitlynn reached across and adjusted the wick. The flame steadied.

“Three seconds,” Chris said.

“What?”

“Tonight. I got three seconds where she was just there. No performance, no armor. Just her.” He looked at the baby on his chest. “Then she told me about drainage corridors and left.”

Caitlynn laughed, quiet, held down. “Give her time. The seconds will get longer.”

He stood, careful, lifting Elianna against his shoulder. The baby didn’t stir. He passed her across the table to Caitlynn, the transfer smooth, practiced, their arms crossing without collision.

“Chris.” Caitlynn held his niece against her chest. “She’s lucky. She doesn’t know it yet.”

He walked back through the garden, along the covered walkway, into the residential wing. The corridor was cold. His boots sounded on the stone. He passed Sloane’s door. Through the wall, he could hear her breathing. Slow now. Even. She’d finally stopped sitting on the floor.

He pressed his hand flat against the door frame. Held it there for a count of five. Then he walked to his room, pulled off his boots, sat on the edge of the bed.

He’d keep trying.

Even though he did not understand why he wanted to. He’d keep trying.