For one endless second, neither of us moved.
The image glowed on my phone screen between us like something alive.
Grainy paper. Archive lighting. A council header. My name. Kade’s name. And beneath them, in cold official wording that made my skin crawl:
Primary response recorded — Blackthorne, Kade. Recommendation: delay disclosure.
Delay disclosure.
Not uncertainty.
Not suspicion.
Not possible.
Recorded.
Recommended.
Buried.
My breath came too fast.
I looked at the screen.
Then at Kade.
Then back again as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less monstrous if I stared hard enough.
They didn’t.
Of course they didn’t.
Because this was what powerful people did, wasn’t it? They took the most sacred, private parts of someone’s life, wrote them into records, a
