Something crossed Viktor's face. Brief. A slight adjustment in his expression — not quite offense, not quite amusement, the particular response of a word landing wrongly.
"I don't think we have that kind of relationship," he said.
Celestia went still.
The words were quiet. Not angry. Not wounded. Simply precise — the surgical removal of an assumption she'd made without examining it. She'd walked in here carrying 'nephew' as a given, the familial shorthand of a category that implied mutual warmth and shared history and the kind of obligation that ran both directions.
He was telling her it didn't run both directions.
He was telling her, without drama, without accusation, without the satisfaction of watching her feel bad about it — just telling her, cleanly, as a fact about the current geography between them.
'A nephew whom we abandoned for twenty-plus years.'
