Her lips press together, and her gaze drops to the center of my chest. She shouldn’t know more than the handful of corridors I’ve walkedher through, but Miro has never accepted the limits placed in front of her. She’s too intelligent for that. If there’s another path, she’ll find it.
“Miro.”
Her gaze lifts to mine, and I see the decision settle across her face.
“I mapped them.”
I close my eyes for a moment.
“Of course you did.” The answer fits her far too well. “Why?”
She doesn’t answer straight away. Instead, her stare drifts across the room until it catches on Father’s body. She goes perfectly still, the color draining from her face before she forces herself to look away again. A shudder works through her.
She’d survived Helix. She’d survived the Warrens. She’d survived my father’s office. Even the strongest being would carry the weight of today.
Before she can retreat any further into herself, I slide one arm beneath her knees and lift her into my arms. She doesn’t protest. I carry her across the office and settle her carefully onto a couch turned away from the carnage. Only then do I kneel in front of her, tucking my knuckle beneath her chin until her focus slowly finds mine again.
Her eyes are haunted.
“What did you see?”
“I...” She swallows hard, her voice rough. “I wanted to make sure you came back.” She draws a shaky breath. “Percy still had access to the House surveillance. The night you went to retrieve the node... I followed you through the cameras.”
Understanding settles over me before she says another word.
“I watched you.” Her eyes glisten, but she refuses to look away. “I saw you take that male into the room.”
Fuck.
Every question I’d carried since she’d withdrawn from me answers itself in a single breath. She hadn’t stopped trusting me because I’d failed her. She’d stopped trusting the male she thought she knew.
“I couldn’t make sense of it,” she whispers. “The male who sat beside me and listened to me... who made me feel...” She shakes her head. “He wasn’t the same male I watched execute someone without hesitation.”
She falls silent for a moment, gathering herself.
“I realized how vulnerable I was. If I ever needed to leave...” Her shoulders lift in a helpless shrug. “I needed to know how.”
I don’t interrupt.
“Percy and I mapped every maintenance tunnel, every unregistered dock, every transport route that bypassed House checkpoints. Every way off Vahiri we could find.” Her focus drops to our joined hands. “Just in case.”
The words don’t hurt the way I expect them to.
Smart people prepare for the worst. Miro has survived because she never stopped planning for the day everything fell apart. I can’t fault her for that. I’d shown her something no human should ever have witnessed, then left her alone to make sense of it. Of course she’d built herself an escape.
What I can’t reconcile is why she never used it.
I step closer and draw her gently into my arms. She stiffens for the briefest moment before melting against me, the tension slowly leaving her body as I hold her close.
“You found every way off this planet,” I murmur. “You memorized every escape.” I tighten my arms around her, still struggling to understand it myself. “But you stayed.”
Her forehead rests against my chest as she lets out a slow, weary breath.
“I tracked you because I wanted to make sure you came back.”
This House raised me to walk into the rooms no one else would enter. Every mission carried the same unspoken expectation. If I survived, there would be another. If I didn’t, another Underlord would take my place. No one waited to see whether I returned. No one cared enough to follow my footsteps through the House.
She did. I rest my cheek lightly against her hair, my palm moving slowly up and down her back. “When you followed me through the security feed, did Percy record the audio as well?”
