I hold out my arm.
The nurse takes it. She swabs the inside of my elbow with something cold and antiseptic and I watch the syringe approach and my arm — without my permission, without any conscious instruction from me whatsoever — pulls back.
A flinch. Small, involuntary, completely against my will.
"Sorry," I say immediately. "I didn't—"
"It's alright," the nurse says patiently. She reaches for my arm again.
"You flinched," Varder says, a small smirk curling his lips.
I turn my head. He is looking at me with something in his expression that I have never seen there before in any of our interactions, which have been characterized almost entirely by coldness and distance and the occasional cutting remark.
The expression is — I am not sure what it is. It is not cruel. It is not mocking exactly. It is the expression of someone who has just been handed a piece of information they find unexpectedly interesting and is deciding what to do with it.
"I did not flinch," I say.
