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I started to resist again. “I do not require—”
“Veyr.”
Something in her tone—that blend of annoyance, concern, and unexpected command—cut through my instinct to argue. I sat.
She took the medical kit from my hand with a firm grip. “You carry an entire portable emergency unit,” she observed dryly, “but apparently cutting your hand turns you into an idiot.”
“It does not,” I retorted, irritation flaring.
“You were about to ignore it,” she countered, already rummaging through the kit.
“It will heal.”
Her eyes met mine briefly, unimpressed. “So will most things. We still clean them.” She pulled out an antiseptic strip with a quiet, efficient rustle.
I watched her hands, the competent and steady way they moved through the kit. This was familiar territory for her—not the conspiracy of records or the threat of discovery, but work.
When she took my wrist to clean the cut, a silver-white light flashed beneath my skin.
We both froze, her fingers still wrapped around me. The ŭre moved again, not in a defensive discharge or from pain, but as a thin line of current that spread slowly beneath the axŭ from my wrist toward my forearm—bright and unmistakably responsive.
Her eyes widened. “Veyr.”
I pulled away.
Too quickly.
The chair scraped against the floor as I stood.
The light vanished.
Talia remained seated, antiseptic strip still in one hand. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Her expression shifted immediately. “Absolutely not.”
I looked at my wrist.
No residual current. No burn. No nerve response.
Nothing.
“It was involuntary.”
“I noticed.”
“Static.”
She stared at me. “We already used that lie.”
“It was not a lie.”
“It glowed under your skin.”
“My ŭre does that.”
“When I touch you?”
