How could he understand so clearly? “When you put it like that . . .” I sniffed back the tears, letting go of him to wipe my eyes. “Sorry,” I said with a sad little laugh that really wasn’t one. “I haven’t gotten enough sleep. I don’t know how you do it, getting up at daybreak like this. This is crazy.”

He eased me back into motion, heading down the hallway. “Coffee helps. Have you found the staff break room? There’s a mini kitchen. Frozen waffles . . . ,” he coaxed.

I remembered the homemade ones Maggie had made for us. It had been the first meal we’d ever shared. “Sure, thanks.” His hand lingered about my waist, and I dropped my head onto his shoulder again, breathing him in, gaining his strength. I wished things were different. Ivy was going to be okay, but that Trent had saved her life wasn’t going to help his political standing. Keeping her alive was going to be even harder. Cormel didn’t want money, he wanted his soul.

The click of Ivy’s door brought me around, and we hesitated when Nina came out looking exhausted and rumpled—worse than the day after she and Ivy had come back from a five-day backpacking adventure in what was left of a Turn-ravaged Guam.

“Coffee?” the bedraggled woman rasped, her hair still dull with dust and hanging in strands about her creased, worried face. The scratch the surface demon had given her was red rimmed and swollen, looking worse than it probably was.

“And waffles.” Trent gestured for her to join us. “Right this way.”

Relief flickered across her face. “Thank you,” she whispered, shuffling forward in her torn nylons. She hadn’t even taken the time for a shower, and was still in the same clothes she’d had on in the ever-after. The faint scent of burnt amber lingered even now. Her clothes were a monochromatic orange from the dust, and guilt kept her head down. That was fine with me.

“We keep this stocked for the medical staff,” Trent was saying as we found the comfortable, if somewhat sterile, break room, open to the hallway. “I’m assuming that you’d rather eat here than upstairs?”

I nodded as I took in the clean counters, homey tables, and fresh flowers in vases still beaded up with condensation. Four monitors hung from the ceiling, three dark and one lit with Ivy’s vitals. An entire wall was taken up with one of those floor-to-ceiling vid screens showing a deck and a garden, and I collapsed at a table, thankful for the small comfort.

Nina took a chair across from me, easing down with a little more grace and a cautious glance. There were dirty dishes in the sink from the doctor and nurse on call. I’d put them in the dishwasher later.

I loved watching a man cook, even if it was only toast, and I collapsed my head onto the cradle my arms made on the table, exhausted, as Trent took waffles out of the tiny freezer in the top of the fridge. “If you want to come upstairs, I can make them from scratch,” he said as the door sealed with a sucking sound. “The girls are at the stables with Quen. I thought it better to keep them occupied out of the, ah, house.”