Chapter One Hindred and Forty -Seven
Markus gave a short, humorless laugh and stepped closer to the bed.
"You just ca back from the dead," he said. "Try recovering first."
Aht’s eyes flicked over him, sharp despite the pallor of his skin. He shifted, testing his weight, and the slightest hitch in his breath betrayed the pain he refused to acknowledge.
"I’m fine," Aht said. His voice was rough, scraped raw by blood loss and stubbornness. "Where is it?"
Markus shook his head. "You were shot in the chest. You lost more blood than you’d like to admit. You’re not even supposed to be sitting up."
Aht swung his legs over the side of the bed anyway. The motion was careful and controlled, but it cost him. His fingers dug briefly into the mattress, knuckles whitening, before he straightened.
"I didn’t survive this to lie down and wait," he said. "If I’m breathing, I’m moving."
Markus swore under his breath. He moved in instinctively, a hand hovering near Aht’s shoulder, ready to steady him if he fell. "This isn’t bravery. It’s stupidity."
Aht shot him a look that would have silenced most n. "You don’t get to lecture on survival."
Silence stretched between them, thick and brittle.
Markus exhaled slowly, then reached into the drawer by the bed. He didn’t hand the gun over imdiately. He held it there, resting in his palm, a quiet test.
"Tell one thing first," Markus said. "Did you really think she wouldn’t pull the trigger?"
Aht’s jaw tightened. For the briefest second, sothing dark crossed his face... disbelief, regret, sothing far more dangerous than pain.
"I thought," he said carefully, "that she would hesitate."
Aht looked past Markus, his gaze drifting to nothing at all. The mory rose without invitation; the weight of the gun in her hand, the steadiness of her stance, the way her eyes had gone eerily calm. Not wild. Not furious. Certain. That was what had undone him. Not the pain and not even the bullet. It was the certainty.
He had built his life on reading people. On knowing what fear did to them, how anger sharpened or ruined them, how desperation made n reckless. Those things he understood. They were currencies he had traded in since his first kill. But whatever had lived between him and Asli had not fit into any of those categories, and he had walked into it blind.
He had expected hesitation without knowing why he expected it. Had mistaken proximity for control. Familiarity for safety. And when the mont ca, when the world narrowed to her breathing and the pull of the trigger, he learned... too late... that there were forces he had never studied and could not predict.
And when it hadn’t co, sothing inside him had split open wider than the wound in his chest. Not because she had shot him but because she had done it without flinching. Because the woman he thought despite everything, they had sothing special going on, had chosen the kill shot and lived with it.
For the first ti since he was a boy, Aht realized how close he had co to being wrong about soone who mattered. And how deadly that mistake had been.
Aht said nothing to Markus.
The words stayed lodged in his chest, heavy and unspoken, where everything else had been settling since he woke. He kept his face still, his breathing even, refusing to give the thought shape or sound. So things lost their power the mont they were spoken aloud, and this, this was not sothing he was willing to hand over.
Markus didn’t push. Didn’t smirk. Didn’t make a joke sharp enough to cut or cruel enough to stick. He busied himself instead, adjusting the chair, shifting his weight, and pretending the silence was nothing more than a pause between n who had survived worse.
Aht noticed.
He noticed the absence of mockery, the way Markus chose not to look at him too closely, the deliberate respect in the space he left untouched. Gratitude was not sothing Aht ever wore openly, it was a weakness, and an admission but it settled quietly all the sa. It was a small, steady thing beneath the pain.
For now, that was enough.
But the silence couldn’t hold forever.
Aht drew in a careful breath, feeling it scrape where it shouldn’t, and turned his head just enough to acknowledge Markus’s presence. Speaking would feel like conceding sothing he wasn’t ready to na, yet the weight of it pressed harder the longer he kept it buried.
He had been foolish. There was no softer word for it. Foolish to assu that what had grown between him and Asli would slow her hand. Foolish to believe that whatever lived in her eyes when she looked at him could override the instincts she had sharpened her entire life.
He had misjudged her.
And yet, how was he supposed to have known?
He had lived long enough in violence to recognize what those emotions did to people. But this... this had been sothing else entirely. He had walked into that warehouse believing he understood every weapon she carried.
He had been wrong.
His gaze lowered, not in sha, but in acceptance. He didn’t dress the truth up, didn’t reach for excuses. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to defend himself or soften what had happened.
It was simply to admit it, so he wouldn’t repeat this mistake.
Markus closed his fingers around the weapon and finally passed it to him, sending words were too heavy. "That hesitation almost killed you."
Aht took the gun, checked it with practiced ease, then let it rest against his thigh. His breathing steadied, and his focus sharpening despite the weakness still clinging to him.
"She ant to kill ," he said quietly.
Markus nodded once. "She thought she did."
Sothing ugly tore loose in Aht’s chest.
His breath stuttered, not from fear, but from the effort of keeping his hands still. They curled anyway, tendons standing out, and his knuckles whitening as if his body hadn’t gotten the ssage that the fight was over.
"I don’t know what I feel anymore," he said, and the words scraped their way out of him. His voice trembled feral, like an animal pacing the bars of its own ribcage. "I don’t know when it stopped being... anything."
He swallowed hard, jaw ticking.
"But I know this," he went on, the quiet sharpening into sothing dangerous. "If she were standing in front of right now, if I had the chance..."
His teeth clicked together. The sentence broke off, unfinished, because finishing it would an admitting how easily it would co.
"I’d do it," he said instead. Flat. Honest. No drama left in it. "I wouldn’t think. I wouldn’t hesitate. I will kill her."
Markus didn’t move. He didn’t flinch and knew he would’ve done the sa thing.
Aht dragged a hand down his face, breathing through his nose now, forcing the beast back where it belonged. "Not today," he muttered. "Not tomorrow. I don’t even want to look at her. I don’t want her voice in my head again."
He looked up then, eyes burning, and stripped of illusion.
"But if she tries anything again... anything worth killing over, no one would survive either." A pause. Then, colder. "I’ll end it."
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