“I’ll do my best. He seems to like you better than he ever liked me. Probably because you’ve both got cocks.” She shrugged. “Or I assume he does. Do ghouls fuck like regular people, do you think?”

“I have no idea,” Gyre said.

“Elariel has tits, anyway. I should have asked her while I had the chance.” Kit looked thoughtful. “That’d be … I mean, all that fur, right?”

“Kit,” Gyre said again.

“Plaguefire, I know I’m horny when I start thinking about ghoul snatch,” Kit said. “Do you still want to fuck?”

“What you said, back in the tavern.”

“Are you still thinking about that?” Kit said, with a theatrical sigh. “What is this, you won’t give it up until I whisper ‘I love you’ in your ear?”

“I want to be sure where I stand.”

“Argh!” Kit rubbed her hands frantically through her spiky blue hair. “All right. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry! Is that good enough?”

“I don’t need an apology,” Gyre said. “I just want to know … what you think, I guess.”

“What I think is that my life has not done a great deal to prepare me for the experience of maybe giving a little bit of a shit about someone, okay? So maybe I’m not the best at dealing with it. And after what happened to you in the Tomb …” She hesitated. “I thought you might blame me. For, you know. Getting your eye socket ripped open and days of shrieking agony.”

“I was the one who made you take me there.”

“Yeah, well, people aren’t always rational about that sort of thing.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t actually fuck anyone at the tavern, if that matters to you. I may have made out with the blacksmith girl a little; I’m not sure, I was pretty drunk. But I’m ninety percent certain that was all.” She cocked her head and waggled one hand. “Well. Eighty percent.”

“You were right, though. I don’t own you.”

“Of course not. But if we’re going to be the kind of partners who spend time naked together, you know. There should probably be some ground rules.” Kit let out a deep breath. “Okay. Done with the feelings-talk. Can we please just f—”

Gyre cut her off by pressing his lips to hers. Kit fell over with a delighted squeak, her hands already tugging at his trousers.

*

Sometime after, Gyre lay on his back, staring at the roof of the tent. Kit was nestled beside him, naked and warm, her breaths slow and peaceful.

What am I doing here?

He could follow the steps that had brought him to this place in his mind. Maya’s abduction, his mother’s death, the hard years on the road as he’d searched for anything that offered a scrap of hope that the Order might not be all-powerful. Deepfire, Yora and the rest, his pursuit of the Tomb, and finally Kit. And now I’m following a mad old ghoul in pursuit of a power I don’t even understand.