I really looked at him as though the words he had just spoken were fragile things, glass-thin, trembling in the air between us, capable of shattering if I touched them too quickly or breathed too hard.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, shock rooting me to the chair. “When you say… official. What do you really mean, Soren?”

He didn’t look away.

Not even for a heartbeat.

“I mean we stop pretending,” he said calmly, but there was nothing casual about ...