When Kiem arrived, one look at his face made everything run out of Jainan’s mind like water.

“Kiem?” Jainan dropped his wrist and the screen disappeared. The chair he was in skidded back an inch as he scrambled to his feet, stumbling in the lower gravity. “Is something—what’s wrong?”

Kiem didn’t answer. He was standing in the doorway, so the door couldn’t close.

“Are you ill?” Jainan took a step forward. The lines on Kiem’s face were tight and strained. “I’ll—I’ll call someone.” Sit down, he wanted to say, but Kiem’s expression stopped him.

Kiem tried to speak, but had to clear his throat. “I—Jainan. We need to talk.

About.” He stopped.

Jainan froze as his mind crowded with all the things he could have told Kiem but hadn’t. Some minor transgression—someone he had spoken to or some way he had embarrassed both of them—no, that couldn’t be it. He struggled to remember that Kiem wasn’t like that. “About what?”

Kiem stepped in so the door shut behind him. “You and Taam.”

Jainan had never heard Kiem’s voice sound like that before. It could still be anything, he told himself. The air around him felt sticky. It terrified him that he was falling back so often on his last line of defense— I don’t want to talk about it

—but he started framing it anyway. “I—”

“I found out how things were between you.”

No. Jainan’s next words dried up on his tongue. Cloying shame filled his

mouth, his throat; it bound his feet to the floor.

“Jainan?”

“It’s not true,” he managed.

“What’s not true?” Kiem said. There was a pause as if, in the natural flow of conversation, he expected Jainan to reply. “Jainan, I saw it!” He must have caught Jainan’s flash of panic, because he frowned and said, “You were—you were arguing. It was a security feed.” It was obvious he didn’t want to say the next bit, but Kiem had never learned to hold the slightest thing back. “He shoved you into the wall.”

It’s not what you think. It was less than a handful of times. That sounded so pathetic Jainan discarded it. He shook his head, fighting a wave of nausea.

“Jainan, come on!” Was Kiem raising his voice, or was Jainan imagining it?

He couldn’t tell; his ears were buzzing. “I worked out Taam must have been the one who got your security clearance revoked. See, you’re not even surprised.

You knew that—oh, for fuck’s sake, Aren knew, didn’t he? Taam’s friends knew how he treated you. It was staring me in the face. Fuck.”

Jainan stood like a statue, one hand resting on the back of the chair. His eyes compulsively followed Kiem as he paced from wall to wall: he was blurred, a moving shape that Jainan couldn’t focus on.

“Aren knew,” Kiem said, persevering. “Why did he act so friendly? To—

make fun of us or something? To play with our heads? Why didn’t you say anything? I had to find this out from Audel stealing a vid from Kingfisher!”