Page 146

“What?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes narrowed. “That was not nothing.”

I smiled. “Now you’re stealing my lines again.”

“I am not.”

“Sure.”

He looked genuinely irritated by that. For some reason, it made the room feel warmer.

When we were done, he stood and checked the window again. Of course he did. But this time, I understood a little more.

Not just habit.

Training.

History.

A life built around keeping other people alive. A life he had apparently considered expendable if the job required it. And maybe I understood why I kept challenging him about it.

I had spent years telling myself I stayed on Earth because staying was my decision. Because work was mine. Because usefulness gave me leverage. Because knowing how to survive somewhere meant I controlled my life there.

Veyr called his version duty.

I had called mine choice.

Neither word automatically made the thing beneath it true.

I watched him move through the room.

Decorated Strike Commander. Unit. Friends. Someone who slept better when other people were close enough to trust.

And a male who apparently remembered which fruit I liked even though he still could not tell me what he liked himself. Those details were tiny.

Nothing compared with the secrets I had forced out of him about covert systems, operational identifiers, and dead-warrior records.

Yet I knew instinctively which kind had cost him more.

The classified information had been dangerous.

The personal information was worse. Because operational secrets belonged to Ghost. Those memories belonged to Veyr.

And for the first time, he had given me a piece of them without making me fight for it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Veyr

Idid not like involving other people. That was the first problem.

The second was that I trusted almost no one. The third was that the one male I trusted enough to examine what was happening beneath my skin had spent the last twelve years treating soldiers, smugglers, laborers, and anyone else willing to pay him without asking questions.

Which meant he had survived by knowing when not to ask them.

Talia looked out the transport window as we crossed the edge of the trading district. “This is farther than I expected.”