“I most certainly will be mad.” Her look is icy. “That was a sneaky, horrible trick, sending us to the parlor. You could have come up with another way to get the information you were after.”

Ash slides up to her. “You would never have agreed. And you have to admit that if I had been there, the interactions wouldn’t have been as revealing.”

She pushes his hand off her elbow. “I really don’t care, Ashai.”

“You do care. You also know that sending November by herself wouldn’t have had the same effect,” he says.

“But if it did, you’d have been happy to let me take the heat? Gee, thanks,” I say.

“Apparently he’ll do anything that benefits his strategy,” Layla says. “He’s practically Machiavellian these days.”

“Don’t be cruel, Layla. I said I was sorry. Look, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“And how do you plan to make up for the fact that Nyx said I seem less neutral every day?” Layla asks, and Ash’s face falls.

All of his earlier playfulness disappears. “Hang on. Back up.”

“You heard me,” Layla says, and I desperately want to ask about these political divisions, but I know this isn’t the time.

“Luckily, November shifted the conversation and it ended,” Layla says, and Ash looks at me, not like he’s grateful but like I’m the root of the problem.

“Okay, Layla. We’ll fix this,” he says in a reassuring voice. “But in the meantime, let me try to make it up to you. Anything you want.”

Her stubborn expression wavers slightly. “Anything?”

“Yes,” he says, and with some dramatic resignation, he adds, “Even my sword trick.”

Some of the tension in her face disappears. There is a long moment where they just look at each other, at the end of which he grins.

“Oh, shut up,” Layla says. “The least you can do is not gloat about it.” And I realize they just had an entire exchange using nothing but facial expressions, which I only caught a sliver of.

Ash grabs two pillows from the armchairs and hands them to us. Layla sits down on the rug near the wall and places her pillow behind her back. I do the same thing opposite her, and Ash plops down lazily in the middle of the floor, leaning against one of the cushy chairs.