Nothing less.
She pushes off the wall before the silence can settle too deeply, already turning away, already choosing movement over stillness. Staying here means thinking, and thinking means?—
“Running again?”
Ronyn’s voice reaches her before she’s taken more than a few steps. Patient and forgiving and present. Always.Just there.
Jax stills, her back to him, irritation rising fast enough to mask everything else.
“I’m not running,” she snaps, her gaze fixed ahead into the dark. “I’m removing myself from a room full of insufferable people with too many opinions.”
There’s a brief pause behind her.
“There seems to be a very significant overlap between there and here, Jaxxy,” Ronyn observes wryly.
She almost smiles.Almost. But she doesn’t. Things are still too fractured between them.
They haven’t spoken about it. Not since the inn in Vyrhal. Since she was cruel and unfair.Not that she’ll admit it out loud.
Jax turns then, slowly and deliberately, meeting his gaze across the space between them.
Ronyn leans against the stone like he’d already decided where this conversation would happen and simply waited for her to catch up to it.
“Don’t you have a performance to give?” she snaps. “A room to manage?” she asks.
He huffs like he’s already exhausted by her. “They’re managing themselves,” he counters smoothly, ignoring her jab.
“They’re about ten heartbeats away from tearing each other apart.”
He smirks.
“I think it helps that you’re no longer in the room.”
The answer lands smoothly. And this time, she can’t help it—she smiles. Small, but there.
Jax shifts her weight, folding her arms tighter, reinforcing the distance between them even as she holds his gaze.
“You shouldn’t have followed me out here.”
“Why? Because then we’d be adults and actually speak to one another?”
No apology. No justification. Just fucking maturity she doesn’t have the energy to face. It unsettles her more than if he’d argued.
Silence settles between them—the deliberate kind. He doesn’t rush to fill it. He doesn’t push. He just stands there, steady in a way that feels more intrusive than anything he could have said.
“Marin hit a nerve,” he says after a moment.
It’s not a question.
Jax’s jaw tightens.
“She…” but Jax trails off.
“She spoke truths you didn’t like?” Ronyn ventures.
Her eyes sharpen, defensiveness flashing there before she can stop it.
“I don’t need you fucking analyzing me, Ronyn,” she says, stabbing a finger in his direction.
