Page 78 of Pocket Wife

Adjudicator Salo glances at him.

Torren studies the floor.

Sen changes direction. “Miss Hartwell, your personal relationship with Specialist Veyr began during this dispute, correct?”

Rethan’s voice answers from the evidence station. “Disclosed already.”

“I am questioning Miss Hartwell.”

I hold Rethan’s eyes once. He goes still, accepting the line he cannot cross for me.

Good.

I need to stand here myself.

“Yes,” I say.

“Did that relationship influence your decision to resist Helix relocation?”

“No.”

“Did it influence your trust in his legal judgment?”

“Yes.”

Sen’s face sharpens. “So you admit⁠—”

“I trust him more because I watched him risk comfort, position, and safety for evidence that does not belong to him. I trusted him less when he first arrived wearing official authority and calling our lives procedural.” I look toward the tribunal. “If that is bias, it was earned in public.”

Even Corvek’s image goes still.

Sen recovers first. “And your bond with him?”

The witness screens flicker as people lean closer.

There it is.

Not personal involvement.

Bond.

The thing Helix has been waiting to turn into spectacle.

I feel heat climb my neck. For one ugly second, I see myself through Helix’s eyes: farmer, woman, emotional resident, compromised witness, alien-bonded distraction.

Then I see Rethan in the schoolroom, offering tea instead of strategy.

I see his hand stopping before it touched me in public because choice mattered even when fear did.

I see him saying, because I do.

I face the tribunal. “My bond with Rethan Veyr does not make my grandmother buried somewhere else. It does not move the north cistern. It does not write Celia’s ledger, forge Helix’s threats, alter Maev Orlan’s testimony, or put armored officers in a bakery. If Helix wants to prove the evidence false, it should prove the evidence false.”

Celia whispers, “That’s my girl.”

This time no one tells her to be silent.

Adjudicator Salo taps the table once. “Advocate Sen, confine further questioning to material relevance.”