“Your father’s dagger straight through the heart,” Kit said, patting her chest. “I’m terrified.” She blinked hard, the skin at the corners of her eyes bunching. “Where are we? The coast?”

“Kiva.”

Kit stiffened, her mouth a thin line. “I told you we were riding through Kiva. Not stopping for the night. I specifically said—”

“Well, you didn’t give me much choice, did you?” Anji said. “You passed out in the middle of the damned street. What was I supposed to do, leave you lying there for your old friends to find? They would have actually slit your throat, and I wouldn’t have been any closer to getting my things back.” She turned away. “Though I would have been rid of you at least.”

“So that’s it then?” Kit said. “You have to get the bag open, so you save my life, bring me in here and get us a room, and somehow buy me—”

She stopped, her eyes narrowed. She looked around the dingy room as though she’d never been inside an inn in her life. Anji twitched away from the finger Kit leveled at her.

“How did you pay for this?” She dug out the other vial and joined it with the first. “For these?”

“I didn’t have to—”

“Wait.” Kit reached for her belt where her pouch usually hung. “You stole my money?” She threw a spitting glare at Anji and stormed across the room to the bundle of clothes Anji had set atop the dresser at the window’s edge.

“If you’d just let me—”

“Shut the hell up.”

Kit rummaged through her things until she found her pouch and lifted it, Celdia clinking together inside. She wrenched it open, fished around with a finger, and glanced back at Anji.

“Well,” Kit said, strapping the bag back to her belt, “you don’t have a Celdia to spare yourself—”

“You made sure of that.”

“How did you pay for the room?”

“Am I interrupting?”

They both whirled. Jared stood in the now open doorway, one spindly hand on the knob.

The room rang with silence. Kit opened her mouth, then closed it again, staring at Jared with wide eyes. Anji tried and failed to hide a grin and nearly broke the silence when Jared cleared his throat.

“Sorry about the linens,” he said, straightening. He scratched at the corner of his mouth. “This room hadn’t been used in a while and I—”

Then Kit did something Anji had neither heard nor ever expected to hear out of her. She laughed. Not a scoff or a snort. It was a small titter that grew into a rasping, relieved cascade. She sniffed and bounded across the tiny space, bare feet slapping on the boards, and into Jared’s now outstretched arms.