He’d decided not to tell her how disruptive their more complicated transmutations were proving. He did not doubt her resolve, but preferred to let her remain undistracted. If she thought her brother was in peril, she’d leave. Fortunately she was so engrossed in their magework she had no interest in the world beyond their heavily warded estate… and with Rumm warned not speak of what was happening in Dorana, she remained comfortably ignorant.

Which was for the best.

“Morgan?”

“A mine collapse in Trindek,” he said, and kissed her. “Some deaths. Very sad. He thought I should know of it without delay.”

She stared. “In the middle of the night? That’s hardly considerate. It’s not as if there’s anything you can do.”

“True,” he said. “But Nydd is nothing if not conscientious. My love, are you too weary to keep on working? For if you’re not I’d like to finish this incant before we sleep.”

“Too weary? Never,” she said, then stifled a yawn. “Here. See what I’ve done?” She pushed the notebook toward him. “I think this reworking of the second stanza will allow us to transmute the armoured carapace into flexible scales without any more suffocations.”

And of course, she was right. A flame of excitement, leaping. Familiar heat in his blood. Underneath that, a tiny prickle of resentment, swiftly quashed. But oh, sometimes it was hard to accept how easily she reworked him. How she could look at his incants and see at once where he’d misstepped.

And after all this time, I still cannot break her wards.

“Morgan?”

He kissed her, deeply, smothering pettiness with pleasure. “Yes, my love. That’s it exactly. Let’s go through the whole incant again, to be certain… and on the morrow, we’ll test it.”

But on the morrow, Morgan received a note, by extremely roundabout means, from one of his mysterious catalyst suppliers.

“More bad news?” Barl said, as they shared breakfast in the mansion’s bread-scented kitchen. “Please don’t say we’ll have only Lady Martain’s goodwill to sustain us from now on.”

Folding the note, Morgan shook his head. Then he slipped it inside his tunic. “No. But I will have to meet with him.”

“Here?”

“Never here. I’ll be gone several hours. You’ll manage on your own?”

She threw a toast crust at him. “Mind your manners, Lord Danfey, or you’ll be tidying your own incants.”

He still looked tired, but his smile was as dazzling as ever. “Yes, my lady.”

Yes, my lady. He often said that, to tease her, but it was just a tease. They weren’t handfasted yet. Of course they were very busy, the magework had to come first. And of course he loved her. That hadn’t changed. But now and then she couldn’t help wishing…