Bitterlich had spent a great deal of time in this strange jungle in his youth. It was a setting good for both curiosity and despair, emotions he had experienced in abundance.

It was here he’d met Monsieur Belleaux, an empirical philosopher who’d spent his days exploring the spire, trying to quantify the strangeness. Bitterlich had helped his team navigate the quondam jungle, and in return Belleaux had introduced him to empirical philosophy. Looking back, Belleaux might have been the first Sanguinaire to instantly treat Bitterlich as if he was a full human and not some half-beast. Like Isabelle, he judged men by other standards, and never had time to waste on contempt, not when there was so much exploration to do.

“What we know about the world would fit in a thimble,” he’d said. “What we know that we don’t know would fill a bucket. What we don’t know that we don’t know is all the rest.” He’d gestured at the whole of creation.

Perhaps that was how Isabelle had slid so easily past Bitterlich’s defenses. She had that same ability to be captivated by reality. He hadn’t expected her to be captivated by him.

He adored Isabelle. He hadn’t meant to. He’d only wanted to like her because she was fierce and smart and cool under fire. He’d deployed witty banter, which was usually good at establishing rapport without provoking intimacy of feeling, but she’d foiled him by finessing secrets he’d sworn he’d never tell and helping him grieve for friends long dead. Banter had become flirting, and before he knew it, they were saving each other’s lives and thwarting a coup d’état.

Even then, he might have escaped romantic longings, but she’d gone and kissed him, or rather she had beguiled him into kissing her. Not that there was anything wrong with the kiss. Indeed, it had been a prizewinning specimen of its type. He hadn’t wanted it to stop. He’d wanted it to go on and on. He wanted to make her happy.

What he wanted didn’t matter.

She’d all but sent him a gilded invitation to court her, to become her lover, her partner, dare he dream, her husband. She wanted children.

He couldn’t give them to her. He needed to tell her that. Every day he didn’t was a dereliction of friendship. He’d been derelict for months now, hoping that desire would fade on its own, without fuss or embarrassment … or shame.

Like a great wooden spiderweb spanning the gap between several large quondam pipes was a domed platform called the Middle Junction. Here most of the major pathways in le Ville Céleste converged. Several balconies opened up into the tube, giving visitors a chance to stare and wonder at the quondam landscape in which they were embedded.