I nod slowly. “I’m scared too.”
Her eyes flicker. “Of what.”
“Of losing you,” I admit, because it’s the simplest truth and therefore the hardest to hide. “Of losing the child. Of watching the institution do what it does best: isolate and grind until the inconvenient stop moving.”
Selene’s jaw tightens. “Then don’t let it. Don’t let it make you into the clean scapegoat again.”
“I won’t,” I repeat, and step closer until there is only a handspan between us, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body through the air, close enough that her scent reaches me beneath the tribunal sterility—a faint trace of something human, like soap and heat and the metallic tang of too many hours under stress. “And I won’t let it make you into a quiet casualty either.”
Selene’s breath catches slightly, and she shakes her head once, as if trying to clear the room of something too intimate. “I don’t need rescue.”
“I know,” I say, and let the words be gentle without being soft. “But I do need you to let me be here without feeling like I’m stealing your agency.”
Selene’s gaze holds mine, and for a moment the anger in her face loosens into something rawer, something that looks like grief meeting defiance and deciding to stay upright anyway.
“Okay,” she says, voice lower. “Be here. But be here as you. Not as the commander sacrificing himself to keep the story tidy.”
“I can do that,” I reply, and a grim, almost tender humor touches my mouth. “It’s not my strongest habit, but I can learn.”
Selene snorts softly, the sound half laugh, half disbelief. “You better.”
Silence settles again, but it’s a different kind of silence now—less like a cage, more like a moment of air between blows. I look at her hands, clasped so tightly the knuckles are pale, and I lift my bound wrists slightly, the binders humming faintly, a reminder of the institution still gripping me.
“You’re still in danger,” I say.
“So are you,” she replies.
I nod. “We can’t pretend this suite is safe just because it’s softer than a cell.”
Selene’s eyes sharpen. “Then what are we doing right now?”
The question hangs, not procedural, not rhetorical, and the answer is not strategy alone. We’ve had strategy for days, weeks, years. Strategy didn’t stop Kirell. Strategy didn’t keep her parents alive. Strategy didn’t keep the doctrine from being written. Strategy is necessary, but it is not enough to carry a person through the night when the night has teeth.
“We’re choosing,” I say quietly.
Selene’s expression shifts, wary. “Choosing what.”
I take another slow breath, tasting filtered air and something warmer now, something like the faint sweetness of her presence in a room designed to erase sweetness.
“You told me you’re pregnant,” I say, voice low, careful. “You told me Vol offered protection in exchange for silence. You told me you refused. And you told me you want a partner who stands beside you openly. I am here. I am saying, deliberately, that I choose you. Not as an escape. Not as a secret. As a commitment.”
Selene’s eyes brighten, and for a second the hardness in her face fractures into something vulnerable enough to make my chest ache.
“This is going to be a mess,” she murmurs.
“I know,” I say. “And if the world punishes us for it, then the world will have to do it with us facing it together.”
Selene swallows, then lifts her chin with that stubborn courage that makes me want to both protect and honor her.
“Okay,” she says softly, and the single word is heavier than any oath. “Then don’t flinch.”
I step closer, and this time I do reach for her, not grabbing, not claiming, but offering my presence with my hands held visibly open even in binders, so she can decide how close is close. Selene closes the remaining distance herself, her palm pressing against my chest where my heart hammers, and the simple contact feels like a grounding line thrown across a storm.
Her voice is low, almost conversational, as if we’re discussing logistics instead of survival. “Slow,” she says.
“Slow,” I echo.
We kiss without haste, without frantic hunger, the contact deliberate and steady, as if we are reminding our bodies that they still belong to us even while the tribunal tries to treat us like components. Her mouth is warm, and the taste of her is human—salt, breath, faint sweetness—and for a moment the sterile air of the suite feels less suffocating. The intimacy is not an escape from consequence; it is a refusal to let consequence be the only thing we feel.
