She leaned forward a degree, hiding behind the veil of her hair. “Everything changed after Metis Base. Everything changed after Anderson Station. Everything changed after Terryon Lock. Everything changed after everything.”

“Ez maldecido igaz,” Cyn said, nodding. “Everything changed after everything.”

Karal looked up. His expression was a mix of camaraderie and regret that meant Everything changed after the Gamarra.

Naomi smiled back. It had, and she was sorry too. Being here, with these men, brought up a kind of nostalgia that seeped into everything. All of them would have liked her to tell her stories – being on Eros, riding the first ship through the gate, trekking out to the first colony on the new worlds. Cyn and Karal wouldn’t ask, and so the new one followed their lead. And she kept her own counsel.

Filip was asleep in the next room, his body curled into a comma, his eyes merely closed. They weren’t the profoundly shut eyes of a sleeping baby. The rest of the cell were in other safe houses. Smaller groups drew less attention, and even if they lost one group, the rest could go on. It wasn’t something anyone had said. The strategy was familiar and strange at the same time, like a once-favorite song heard again after years of being forgotten. Karal scooped up the cousa, lifting it off the heating element and spinning it on his fingertips in the same motion. Naomi held out her hand, and he set the cracker down on her palm, their fingers brushing against each other. The simple physical intimacy of close companionship. Of family. It had been true once, and that it was less true now was forgiven by the fact that they all knew it wasn’t what it had been. Since she’d arrived, they’d all been careful not to let conversation stray into anything that put too fine a point on the gap of years she’d been absent.

And so when she broke the unspoken covenant, they would know she’d meant to. And as much as she didn’t want to undo the fragile moment, the only thing worse than talking about it was leaving it all unsaid.

“Filip is looking well,” she said, as if the words carried no extra significance. She bit the cracker, roux and onion flooding her tongue and the back of her nose with salt and sweet and bitter. She talked around it. “He’s grown.”

“Has,” Cyn said, his voice cautious.

Naomi felt years of grief and anger, loss and betrayal at the back of her throat. She smiled. Her voice didn’t waver. “How’s he been?”