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My chest tightened.

He went on before I could respond.

“Being Ghost is no longer enough reason to become someone I despise.”

For a second I could not think of anything to say.

Then I sat. “Tell me.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “What?”

“Not everything.” I gestured between us. “We’re still on a clock.”

His expression did not change, but some of the tension in the room did.

“I mean the part you haven’t been able to say. The part that made Ghost easier than being Veyr.” I softened my voice. “Start with your unit.”

Veyr sat across from me.

“There was a border operation near an outer settlement connected to an embassy corridor. A territorial dispute escalated faster than intelligence predicted,” he said quietly. “We were ordered to hold position long enough for civilians, wounded personnel, and critical diplomatic personnel to clear the sector.”

I remembered the way he talked about duty. About orders. About survival as if it had to be earned afterward.

“You knew you might not make it out.”

“The choice was binary. Hold the line or lose civilians—men, women, children. My unit had less than three minutes to prepare for a mission we knew would be our last.”

“How many in your unit?”

“Twelve. I was number thirteen.”

“This was a Crown order you wouldn’t have walked away from,” I said.

“The order came from the King. We held.”

The words came almost flat.

“I was injured near the end. A fragment entered through my side and lodged deep. I remember part of the withdrawal.”

My gaze dropped instinctively toward his side. The old scar. The one I'd touched in bed, the one he'd finally admitted had nearly killed him.

“Emergency lights through smoke. Damaged comms. Someone calling my rank and then nothing but static.”

My skin prickled. The memory came out in pieces. Exactly like he had lived with it.

“I remember carrying one of my warriors.” His left hand flexed once against his thigh. “I carried him until I could not feel that arm anymore.”

There it was. The same arm I had seen him flex absently when old memories got too close.

I had noticed. I had not understood. Now I did.

“The grip of my weapon kept slipping because there was blood inside my gauntlet.”

His voice remained controlled.

That somehow made it worse.

“I do not remember putting him down.”