I force myself not to tense. Weres pick up on physiological changes like sentient lie detectors, and I nurse too many secrets to have someone as perceptive as Koen on my back. “Maybe you have me mixed up with someone else.”
He shoots me another dissecting, eviscerating look. “Does your sudden inability to shift have anything to do with the reason you decided to disappear on a two-month holiday in the middle of the forest?”
Yes, it does, and no, it’s none of his business. “The reason I decided to disappear, if that’s even a word you can use for someone whose whereabouts were never not accounted for, is that the things I had to deal with in the past year include, in chronological but not traumatogenic order”— I lift my hand and begin counting with my fingers— “the slow realization that I’m
