“You already know I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I needed the three million marks he offered for the information.”

“Yeah, but then he grabbed me and held me hostage and planned to torture and maybe kill me.”

Kiva shrugged. “We told your sister immediately after they grabbed you, because I had people watching you. And then we gave her all the information she needed to find you and get you. Hell, we even gave her your rucksack with the adorable little stuffed pig in it as proof we weren’t fucking around.”

“I still could have been hurt. Or I could have died.”

“You weren’t and didn’t.”

“But—”

Kiva held up a hand. “Can I just wrap up this whole line of conversation by saying I really don’t give a shit whether you’re upset? If you were actually hurt, or dead, then I’d say sorry. But you’re not, so suck it up. The way I see it, if Ghreni wanted you bad enough to give me three million fucking marks for you, then sooner or later he would have just tried to grab you anyway, whether or not I told him anything. Since that was the case, I decided to get paid. This trip was in the red, now it’s not. And we did give your sister information to save your ass. Stop whining about it, for fuck’s sake.”

“I… I literally don’t know what to say to that,” Marce said.

“You could say ‘thank you,’ ” Kiva said, and noticed Vrenna smiling.

“I don’t think I will,” Marce said.

“Okay. But either way, let’s table this and move on, shall we?”

Marce lapsed into silence, next to his still grinning sister, and Kiva noted that both of them were attractive, Marce in a nerdy, probably attentive and considerate way, and Vrenna in a way that suggested that it was fifty/fifty whether your bedframe would be a pile of kindling at the end of a fuck date. Whether Kiva had wanted to admit it or not, Ghreni’s totally insincere attempt at a rendezvous had reminded her it’d been a week since her last attempt at an orgasm, with that assistant purser, and in the time since she was either too busy or too pissed off even to rock herself off.

This qualified as an absolute fucking tragedy, no pun intended, which Kiva would need to attend to one way or another. She idly wondered whether either of the Claremont twins would be the sort to assist her in this regard. She decided that Marce probably wouldn’t, at least not at the moment—he still seemed put out at the idea that Kiva was fine letting him be snatched for three million marks, and honestly, that was totally fair—but maybe Vrenna might. Kiva regretted that time, necessity, and circumstances made following up on that an impossibility.

“Lady Kiva?” Vrenna prompted.