He pressed a hand over his heart, feigning shock. “You wound me!”

“Now that’s a leap. I only dented you.”

They laughed, and for a moment the space between them wasn’t so far. She had never laughed with him before. It was only ever her laughing, and telling him it was funny. And then when she had met him in this body, with emotions, it was in a time when neither of them could afford to laugh. And that felt strange, because for the first time she realized that however much of a stranger he now was, Goddess, did she love this new Di’s laugh.

But then their laughter died, and that strange silence sank between them again, taking up space for being neither friends nor—nor anything more.

She shifted, spinning the crest between her fingers. “I’m kind of afraid of this plan.”

“Me too. There are too many variables. There is at least a ninety-three-point-four-eight percent chance this will end badly for at least one of us.”

Perhaps it will be me, she thought, because she had escaped death too many times.

“What’s the percentage we’ll all make it out alive?” she asked, and he pursed his lips.

“I would rather not—”

“Di.”

“Two-point-three-seven.”

“Oh.” She blinked in surprise. “That is much higher than I thought it’d be!”

“Really? It is much lower than I would like.”

She knocked her shoulder against his playfully. “It always was.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and in their closeness she could hear the hum of his parts, and they sounded as soft as a sigh.

“Is it weird?” she finally asked.

“Is what weird?”

“Being able to compute things in your head knowing—and I guess remembering now, right?—that you used to not be able to?”

He gave a shrug. “I cannot say one way or the other. What is strange to me, though, is not being able to use contractions. That is weird.”

“Really? Can’t you overload a code or something?”

“Overload a co— Ana, please never try to program. Literally anything.”

“Ha! Fine, fine. Fixing you didn’t really work out the first time, anyway. We were shot at, lied to, left on a derelict ship with puppet Metals. . . .”

Di folded his arms over his chest. He had taken off his coat, and it hung on a hook beside the door. His silken shirt was dirty, still smelling of the ancient tomb, and he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His arms were muscular and well defined, rather like Robb’s, and he’d undone the top button of his shirt, his tattered ascot lying under his collar, to reveal a sliver of pale chest. He caught her staring and glanced down at himself. “Is something the matter?”

“This might sound weird,” she started, and poked him in the arm, and it felt solid, “but do you have muscles?”

He pursed his lips together hard, as if trying not to—

“Don’t laugh! It was a genuine question!” she cried.