I scoffed, but she wasn’t wrong. They were pretty. I dropped onto the couch across from her, cake still in hand. “Talking to him is so easy. I love how curious he is about everything.”

“You just like having someone as nosy as you are.”

I smirked. “I just don’t understand how someone can be so observant and so oblivious at the same time. He doesn’t notice anything!”

She gave me a coy smile. “He notices you.”

My face heated, but she was right. Caylus didn’t notice a liquid boiling over above the fire, but he noticed which tea I liked, which muffin was my favorite, and had both ready and waiting when I arrived.

“You notice him too,” she added. “I think you’d live in that workshop if he’d let you.”

My blush deepened. “He’s easy to be around,” I muttered.

“Easy to look at too.”

I laughed. An image surfaced in my mind: him standing face-to-face with Ericen, his eyes hard as jade. At the same time, I thought of him in his workshop, his long limbs twisted into awkward positions in a too-small chair in an attempt to get comfortable, the sunlight illuminating streaks of red in his messy auburn hair, Gio snuggled on one shoulder.

He made me feel safe, comfortable, even happy, and that was all in the middle of Illucia, with the fate of my kingdom at stake.

Kiva fetched Sinvarra and her cleaning materials, then laid the sword out on the table to begin her meticulous polishing process. Someone knocked, and I rose to open the door, revealing Auma. She handed me a letter, though her dark eyes found only Kiva. I thanked her, and she bowed, slipping away.

Beside my name on the envelope, someone had written Lokane, the password we’d decided Captain Mirkova would use for news from Korovi. Had she convinced them to help us? I tore it open, then nearly dropped it when I beheld the simple message:

No.

Upon seeing my face, Kiva rose and snatched the letter from me, then cursed so violently in Korovi, I considered asking the Saints to forgive her. Except wasn’t this just another sign there was no one there? No one listening.

“Saints-damned isolationist snobs!” she finished, chucking the letter into the fire. The flames gobbled it up with the tenacity of Kiva’s curses.

I forced a deep breath. “It’s okay. We still have Jindae, Trendell, and the Ambriels. That’s more than enough.”

“If they all agree.”

* * *

All through morning training and the carriage ride to Caylus’s, I couldn’t stop checking the connection between Res and me. Every time, the cord hummed contentedly, and I would breathe a little slower until the fear compelled me to check again.