He did not answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own.
"When did you start noticing?"
Her pulse tightened. He had not denied it; he had redirected it. She held his gaze steadily. "Recently."
It wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't entirely false either. He nodded once, as if confirming a calculation he had already made.
"You should stop asking questions you're not prepared to understand," he said quietly.
Her fingers curled slightly. "That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It's protection."
The word lingered, but it didn't offer comfort—only constraint. Protection implied that a danger existed far beyond her current awareness. She leaned back slowly, studying him.
"You're not surprised," she said.
He did not respond, because surprise was not permitted in a system like his. But the very absence of surprise revealed his expectation. He had anticipated this moment, which meant he had anticipated her awareness.
It meant her regression might not be as invisible as she had thought.
Her breathing slowed. "You knew this could happen," she said.
He did not confirm it, and he did not deny it. He simply said: "You need to focus on surviving what's in front of you."
Not what was behind her. Not what had changed. Only what was directly in front of her. Her chest tightened because that sounded less like advice and much more like an instruction.