I set her down carefully. “I will not kill them.”
“Promise me.”
“I just said?—”
“Promise me, Kauss.”
The demand cuts deeper than command because it comes wrapped in trust.
I look toward the boarded window. Rain leaks around one corner, dripping onto the sill. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want blood on this place.”
“They already brought violence here.”
“And I don’t want you dragged deeper into it for me.”
“For you?” My voice drops. “They attacked you. They destroyed your bakery. They terrorized your people.”
“My people,” she repeats softly.
“Yes.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
Her lips tremble, but her voice stays steady. “Haven’t you had enough fighting for one lifetime?”
The question strikes with such precision that I cannot breathe.
No one asks me that.
They ask what battles I survived. They ask how many I killed if they are drunk, cruel, or impressed by the wrong things. They ask whether Vakutans miss war when peace leaves their hands empty. They ask whether Horus IV was truly as bad as the reports say. They do not ask if I have had enough, because the galaxy assumes men like me are built for endless violence and therefore immune to its cost.
Evie sees the cost.
She sees it standing in front of her, soaked in old grief and new rage, and still she worries what the next act of violence will do to me.
My defensive walls do not fall. They crack. That is worse.
“Evie,” I say, and her name comes out rough.
She takes another step closer. “I’m not asking you to do nothing. I’m not stupid, despite what the entire neighborhood seems to think every time I make a compassionate decision. I know Ron won’t stop because I gave him a strongly wordedrefusal and a bad review. But I am asking you not to become something you hate because of me.”
“I already am something I hate.”
“No.” She reaches for my hand, the same hand that bent metal and broke bones, and wraps her fingers around two of mine. “You are someone who keeps trying to believe the worst thing about himself because it hurts less than hoping he might be better.”
The words go through me like a round through soft armor.
I pull my hand back, but not harshly. I cannot bear the warmth of her touch and the truth of her voice at the same time.
“You do not know what I have done.”
“I know what you did for me.”
“That is not enough.”
