Page 21 of The Silent War

Her lips parted. She blinked, caught off guard by it. She really believed we had walked away.

Calm. I had to be calm. Don’t spiral.

“You think this ends because you say it does?” I stepped in again, close enough she’d feel me.

“No. I think it ended three years ago when I stopped begging for a reply from you and Bastion. After you both left me on read for months.”

Her words punched were a punch to my ribs.

“I’m sorry,” I forced out. Two words I had rehearsed a thousand times and hated how weak they were.

Sorry I that silence was safer. Sorry I built an empire instead of showing you the bones we were breaking for you. Sorry I let you think we forgot when every hour was you, you, you.

She nodded once. Quick. As if that was enough.

No.

That wasn’t the reaction I wanted. Not even close.

I wanted her fury, tears, her voice raised, calling me every name I deserved. I needed her to bleed it out, to claw at me until the silence I’d forced her to choke on turned into fire I could take, absorb, pay for.

Instead she accepted it. Dismissed it.

As if three years of worship, obsession, of building a city she could walk through untouched—meant nothing.

As ifImeant nothing.

The acceptance gutted me worse than her anger ever could have.

“Don’t nod like that.” My voice dropped. “Don’t you dare dismiss me like I’m some heir you can brush past.”

Her eyes flicked up at mine, startled by the edge.

Good. Look at me. Don’t erase me.

“You were never that to me.” Her eyes didn’t flinch. She held my stare like the knife was meant for me. “That’s why it hurt. But it won’t again. I’ll be polite. I’ll be nice. But don’t expect any more from me.”

It was Veil all over again. Watching her delete the account, delete the memories, deleteme.

Only this time, she wasn’t deleting code. She was deleting the boy who’d bled for her, the man who built a city around her absence.

It hurt. It fucking hurt.

I wanted to tell her the truth.

That her stylists answered to me. Bastion built blackout blinds in every place she slept.

But if I said it now, it would sound like chains.

Like obsessionwithoutdevotion. Possessionwithoutlove. And she’d be right to run.

So I swallowed it.

“You can give them polite. You can give them nice. But don’t you ever give that to me.”

Her eyes narrowed, searching me. “Then what do you want?”

“You,”