Marcus leaned back slightly, gaze fixed ahead. "If there's a duplicate, and she was framed for that murder… sending her back alone into the same place that already tried to erase her..." He paused, the words growing heavier. "Don't you think that's the biggest mistake we could have made?"
The car did not slow. But the air inside shifted.
Thessian did not answer right away. The bond pulsed again, faint, distant, alive.
"You think I don't know that?" His voice stayed quiet, but something sharp and restrained ran beneath it. "I know exactly what she's walking into. I know what Valeria is. I know what her father is capable of. I know what happens to people who become inconvenient there."
His hand tightened against his knee, the tension traveling faintly through the bond.
"I also know there is nothing I could have said that would have changed her mind."
Silence followed, heavy with truth.
Marcus turned slightly in his seat. "So that's it? You just… let her walk into it?"
