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“Then tell me the risks.”

He was silent.

I could almost see him forcing himself to change the way he thought.

“There may still be Review Enforcement officers searching the district,” he said. “The Veil knows this location. I do not know whether they have placed surveillance outside. At this point, there may be no escaping their reach.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

He looked almost wounded by the words.

I picked up my jacket. “I’m not leaving the building.”

Some tension left his shoulders. “Where?”

“There is a partition.”

“Talia—”

“No.”

I met his eyes. “You need to decide whether protecting Ghost matters more than giving me every option I have.”

His face hardened. “That is not fair.”

“Neither was hiding the Crown from me.”

I turned toward the adjoining alcove, then stopped.

One last thought had been sitting at the center of everything.

I looked back.

Veyr had not moved.

“You didn’t keep me away from the Crown because you were afraid Anik would hurt me.”

The stillness in his face shattered.

It was not a flinch or a blink, but a complete fracture of the mask he’d held for eight years—as if I’d struck not him, but the glass case around him, and for one unguarded moment I saw the man inside.

Raw.

Exposed.

I finally understood what I had been missing.

“You kept me away because you were afraid Anik would find out you’re alive. You wanted Veyr to stay dead.”

He said nothing.

He didn’t have to.

For once, his silence told me everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Veyr