“I am holding still.”
“You moved.”
“That was breathing.”
Eventually the silence presses too hard against the inside of my skull. I turn my head slightly toward Varek. He’s stillwatching me with that same relentless focus he’s had since the moment he saw me in the courtyard.
Something inside me snaps. “What the fuck?” I say hoarsely.
Iris pauses mid-movement, and Varek’s eyes shift to mine.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” I continue, the words rough from exhaustion but strained by something deeper underneath. “Letting Aelith go.” I gesture weakly toward the door with my good hand. “For me.”
The bond stirs faintly between us as Varek absorbs the accusation.
Iris glances between us. “Should I?—”
“Yes,” Varek says quietly.
She raises an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She wipes her hands on a cloth and straightens. “Well. Try not to reopen anything important.” Then she steps out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.
The moment it shuts, the atmosphere shifts. The air between Varek and me crackles with something unspoken. For a few seconds, neither of us speaks.
The room still smells faintly of antiseptic and old metal, but beneath that I can catch Varek’s scent now that he’s standing so close. Smoke and clean sweat and something darker, mineral and storm-like that I have never been able to name. The same scent that’s lingered in the warehouse after he arrived there a month ago and had begun to feel dangerously familiar.
I push myself up slightly on the narrow medical table despite the protest from my ribs. “I repeat… what the fuck?” I rasp.
Varek’s eyes flick immediately to my chest, tracking the movement the way he has been since we arrived. “Do not?—”
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” I cut in.
The words come out harsher than I intend, but exhaustion and pain are stripping away any polite filters I might otherwise use.
“You let him go,” I continue, anger simmering under the surface. “The prince. You handed him back like it was nothing. For me. He could have made all the difference for the cause.”
Varek’s jaw sets. “That was the exchange.”
“That was insanity.”
The bond between us pulses faintly with something hot and conflicted.
“You traded the Queen’s own son for a mechanic who runs tunnels under a warehouse,” I go on, gesturing vaguely at myself with my good hand. “That’s not strategy, Varek. That’s reckless.”
He doesn’t respond immediately. Up close his expression has lost the controlled neutrality he wore in the courtyard. Something fiercer burns beneath the surface now.
“Do you believe I did not understand the risk?” he asks quietly.
I scoff weakly. “You handed over a royal ally.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re asking if I think you understand risk?”
His eyes flash. “Enough.”
