She looked at him steadily. "Did you do that on purpose?"
It was a precise question. The kind that couldn't be deflected with a nod.
"Mostly," Jelo said.
Mira held his gaze for a beat, then nodded once. She didn't push further, but he could tell she'd filed it somewhere — cross-referenced it against everything she'd already noticed, stored in whatever careful architecture she used to make sense of the people around her. One word. One beat. One small datum added to a growing ledger.
Atlas leaned in from the side, oblivious or indifferent to the tension. His enthusiasm had the quality of sunlight — it didn't account for shadow. It simply arrived, full and unqualified, lighting whatever it touched without asking first.
