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“I know.”

“But before I do—” His voice caught. Veyr’s sentences usually ended where he intended them to. This one hung unfinished between us.

I watched his hand move across the medical blanket, palm turning upward in a silent question. When my fingers met his, his grip was firm but not tight, the warmth of his skin interrupted by the faint silver-white glow of his ŭre moving beneath our joined hands. The light pulsed once, twice, in time with my heartbeat.

His expression shifted—the tension around his eyes easing for just a moment before returning, more focused than before. “There is something I need to say to you before they know I am alive.”

The monitors behind him beeped a steady rhythm that suddenly felt too loud. I leaned forward until I could see the faint scar along his jawline, the one he’d gotten during a training exercise he’d never described fully. “Okay.”

Veyr looked down at our joined hands, then back at me.

“I would prefer to say it somewhere I am not connected to six medical monitors.”

I counted the cables running from his arm to the wall. “That may be ambitious.”

“I have already asked when I can leave.”

I stared at him. “Of course you have.”

“The answer was unsatisfactory.”

“What was it?”

“No.”

I laughed.

One corner of his mouth lifted. It was there for a breath, and then gone, and his face settled into something quieter, more careful.

He turned my hand over in his and dragged his thumb once across my knuckles.

“When they release me,” he said, “I need to speak with you alone.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Veyr

Being alive required paperwork.

I had not anticipated that.

Apparently dying in service to Zuna was administratively simpler than returning eight years later and informing several departments that the original report had been incorrect.

Medical identity. Military identity. Civil status. Residence records. Property I had never reclaimed. Benefits issued after my supposed death.

One official had attempted to explain the tax implications.

I had asked him to leave.

Talia had laughed for several minutes. That had been worth it.

My temporary identification credential sat on the table now. No Ghost designation. No operational number.

Just my name.

VEYR

I had stared at it long enough that Talia eventually took it from my hand and told me I was making a small piece of metal uncomfortable. She had returned it afterward. It remained beside me.