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“She loved me.”

“That was not my question.”

Kesta gave a humorless smile. “You are learning.” His tail shifted once.

“She harmed me by making love feel like a debt I could repay only through obedience. I left at seventeen. Joined the medical corps because I thought institutional rules would be cleaner than family rules.”

“They were not.”

“No.”

Below the storm, Ash Camp existed only as a direction. Kesta sat beside him rather than across from him. “What happened after Avarra?”

“The empire extracted officers with useful genotypes,” Dreven said. “I refused the first transport because civilians were excluded. They returned with restraints.”

“And condemned you for refusing?”

“For killing the extraction commander after he ordered the lower gates welded permanently.”

Kesta waited.

“By then everyone below was dead.”

“So the act they punished is not the decision that haunts you.”

“No.”

“The empire preserved the useful commander and condemned the man who finally disobeyed.”

His jaw tightened. “Do not make me noble.”

“I am separating crimes. Diagnosis is not absolution.”

He looked at her then.

“You made a catastrophic choice under fear,” Kesta said. “Later you made a moral choice under rage. The empire wants those fused together so you never trust yourself to choose except through control.”

“What would you have me do with Avarra?”

“Stop trying to repay the dead by controlling the living.”

The words landed without mercy. For a long time he said nothing. Then: “I do not know how.”

“Neither do I. But you started when you let the patrol vote on the beacon. You hated it, and you still did it.”

A rough sound left him, almost laughter and almost pain. “Your praise is severe.”

“So are you.”

Silence settled between them, intimate because neither tried to fix the other’s confession. At last Dreven said, “When you walked through the gate, I knew the storm pattern. I knew the predators. I knew you lacked water. I told myself any action was justified because I was correct about the danger.”

“You were correct.”

“And still wrong.”

“Yes.”

His gaze dropped to her wrist. “The tracking function can be physically removed from the band, not merely disabled.” Kesta’s pulse changed. “What does that do to the claim?”