Page 70 of Pocket Wife

We stay joined for long moments, foreheads pressed together, breathing ragged. I kiss her softly—her temple, her bruised cheek, her lips.

“I love you,” she whispers.

The words settle deep inside me, deeper than the bond. “I love you, Lucy.”

A knock sounds at the door. Torren’s voice carries through. “If you two are still alive in there, the tribunal starts soon!”

Lucy drops her head against my chest with a breathless laugh. “I’m going to kill him later.”

“After the hearing,” I agree, helping her down from the desk.

We dress quickly, exchanging small touches—straightening each other’s clothes, brushing chalk dust away. Lucy’s hand lingers over my heart for a final moment.

“Win or lose,” she says, “come home with me afterward.”

“Home,” I repeat, the word carrying new weight. “Yes.”

We leave the schoolroom together, hands brushing once in hidden reassurance before letting go. The fight waits. But so does the future we just chose—again, and more deeply than before.

CHAPTER 27

LUCY

The tribunal arrives without dust.

No transports rattling over the road. No boots in the square. No grand procession for frightened children to watch from windows. By sunrise, after the longest night of my life, the council chamber display simply changes color, and three tribunal officers appear in clean blue light above the central table.

Somehow, that makes it worse.

People understand soldiers. They understand storms, broken pumps, smoke in a bakery, drones turning overhead. But this is quieter. This is the kind of power that can erase a home with one approved sentence.

I stand between the witness table and Rethan’s evidence station, both hands wrapped around the slate Torren shoved at me. I’ve slept zero minutes. My hair is pinned badly. My side aches. My mouth still remembers Rethan’s, which is exactly the wrong thing to think about while an emergency tribunal prepares to decide whether my valley has the legal right to exist.

Rethan stands five steps away.

Not beside me.

Not hidden either.

His plain dark tunic makes him look less formal than usual, but the stillness remains. He carries no insignia, no visible authority beyond the translation index in his hands and the steadiness in his face. When he glances once at me, the bond answers beneath my ribs.

Not now, I tell myself.

The bond does not listen.

It simply steadies.

Adjudicator Eshen Salo, the central officer, speaks first. “Emergency review begins at 06:04 local. Matter: Helix Extraction Consortium petition for provisional relocation enforcement against Solaris Valley settlement cluster. Counterclaim: protected settlement trust established by original covenant and continuous civic occupancy.”

The words are dry.

The room is not.

Families line the walls. Witness screens fill the left side of the chamber. Stonebend, Lark Hollow, Tamsin Ford, and three smaller settlements remain connected. Celia sits near the front with her bandaged arm in her lap, flour still caught under one nail. Nara holds her son while a clinic aide monitors his breathing. Samuel stands behind me, close enough that I can feel his presence but not close enough to rescue me from anything.

Adjudicator Salo continues. “Because archive access occurred less than twelve hours before this hearing, original materials will remain visually sealed pending authentication. Initial arguments will address whether enough evidence exists to suspend Helix enforcement.”

Vance Corvek appears on the right display, immaculate in a charcoal suit.