I could not move.
Julian stood on his knees in the middle of his office, looking up at me like the rest of the building and the city and the Council no longer existed. His breathing was uneven. The careful mask he wore for everyone else was gone. What remained was open and focused and entirely mine in a way nothing had ever been.
The silence stretched. I felt the weight of it in my chest, in the heat climbing my throat, in the way my hands had curled into fists at my sides to keep from reaching for him.
“Why?” I asked.
The single word came out quieter than I meant it to.
Julian’s eyes did not leave mine. When he answered, his voice was rough, stripped of every polished edge he usually kept between himself and the world.
“Because I have spent months telling myself the only thing I was
