I thought I had crossed some line without realizing it.
Now I understood the truth.
The rule had never been that no one could touch it.
Only that I could not.
How pathetic.
I used to think love meant patience. Understanding. Endurance. I kept smoothing over every cut he gave me until I could pretend they no longer hurt.
But love and indifference were never the same thing.
I had simply been too blind to see it.
“Elara,” Cassian said from behind me.
I turned slightly. He was watching me now, his expression dark, clearly irritated by how calm I was.
“I know I shouldn’t have left like that,” he said. “But it was an emergency. It was life and death.”
Life and death.
The words sounded almost laughable now.
I picked up my phone again, opened Odette’s post, enlarged the photo, and turned the screen toward him.
“Saving someone in an emergency is one thing,” I said quietly. “Then what is this?”
His face changed, just slightly.
I held the phone steady and looked him right in the eye.
“Cassian,” I said, a faint edge of mockery slipping into my voice, “do you remember the day you yelled at me for touching your first racing trophy?”
I paused.
“Do you remember what you said to me then?”
