Page 171 of The Silent War

“Later,”

He nodded. We both kept our hands on her—even for that—like if one of us let go the room might tilt.

She drifted. I watched her throat move with swallowing and then settle again. Bastion sat on the edge of the tub and let his fingers trail in the water, drawing lazy shapes that brushed her ankle. Her lips curved at the touch. Not a smile, but something softer.

After a while, I shifted her hand in mine and let my thumb find the spot it had been working since we got in. The rhythm was slower now; her body had learned again how to let go.

Bastion leaned back and watched the two of us with a look I know in myself but never see on my own face: not triumph. Just an animal kind of gratitude for breath and the privilege of proximity.

We had done it—this piece. The piece where safety looks ordinary.

Where caring for her isn’t strategy; it’s temperature and light and hands that don’t stop.

Soon there will be signatures. A public announcement. Thirty days of pretending patience while we make impolite moves beneath velvet words. A helicopter at noon that goes where only we can land. A ring she doesn’t expect because the vault ring isn’t worthy of her and I won’t insult her with history that isn’t ours.

But for now it was water and her cheek on my shoulder.

She drifted toward sleep again. The last thing she did wasreach for Bastion blindly with her free hand. He caught it and kissed her knuckles, slow.

“Good girl,” he said kissing her knuckles.

Her mouth curved. She didn’t open her eyes.

We watched her breathe, the way men do when they know they’ve finally put the right kind of weight on the right kind of scale. The part of me that keeps lists ticked one more line:get her through this day.

The part that keeps knives made a different list I didn’t say out loud: the men who will never make it to our door.

Bastion met my eyes over her again.Ready?he asked without sound.

Ready,I answered.

We really had done it—the first impossible thing.

Chapter Fifty-Three

EMILIA

The papers in front of me didn’t look like contracts.

They looked like traps.

Red ink ran through them in Luca’s neat writing, cutting lines, clauses slashed apart until they bled. Words blurred, my head still heavy from the migraine, but I tried. I forced myself to follow the arrows he’d drawn, the scrawled notes in the margins:hidden siphon,shell bleed,continuity lie.

“They buried the knives everywhere,” Luca said quietly, tapping one paragraph with his pen. “Clause Twenty-eight—looks harmless. Changes ‘exclusive access’ to ‘preferential.’ That one word means they can open your routes to anyone they please. You lose everything overnight.”

My throat went dry. “They told me it was… continuity. Tradition.”

“They told you that,” Bastion muttered, “because they wanted you blind.”

I blinked fast. My chest tightened. “So what do I do? If I refuse?—”

“You don’t sign another line,” Bastion gaze caught mine.

I swallowed hard. My hands shook as I pressed them to my knees. “And if I have to?”

“You won’t.” Luca’s voice was calm, too calm. He turned another page, tracing the ink. “Every clause, every knife—we’ll show you before it cuts. But you don’t bleed for it alone anymore.”

The silence sat thick between us. My heart pounded. I stared down at the papers, at the ledgers that had kept me awake night after night, “And what happens when they decide I can’t carry it anymore?”