Kiem sat on the edge of the ledge they’d crashed on and looked down at the tumbled progression of boulders and slopes that formed a sort of natural path.

“Doesn’t look too bad.” He slithered down to the next ledge, landed in the crust of snow up to his knees, and made a face. “I take that back.” He kicked his way through the drift.

Jainan followed exactly where he’d gone. Kiem waded up front through the drifts, kicking lumps of snow aside to clear a route for Jainan as he slid down onto each ledge. “You know what they don’t put in that bloody survival kit?” he called behind him. “Snowshoes. You okay?”

“Yes,” Jainan said. “You’re making it easy.”

Kiem threw a grin over his shoulder. “I always wanted to drive a snowplow when I was a kid,” he said. “Careful, it gets a bit steeper from here.”

The breeze had dropped completely. When Jainan paused to look behind him, the sky was a vast blue dome, clear and pristine, like some great hill reaching far above the jagged peaks. Jainan’s breath caught in his throat. He knew Iskat was beautiful on an intellectual level: there was a reason the first colony ship of Iskaners had established the capital here and protected it with national parks, but this was the first time he’d really understood why.

The next ledges were acutely sloped and more difficult. They stopped talking.

Kiem had the hiker’s knack of finding the easiest way down; he skirted drifts and found unexpected flat rocks where there shouldn’t be any, so Jainan could stop thinking and concentrate instead on where he put his feet. Kiem’s occasional clumsiness indoors translated into something much more graceful out here; his extra bursts of energy just helped him kick his way through the snow and land on a hidden foothold underneath. Jainan found himself watching him more than he really had to.

Kiem looked around to check on him as Jainan slid down to land on the next patch of rock. Jainan felt a sudden intense gratitude for Kiem’s existence: for his easygoing manner, for his ability to take everything in his stride, for how he

seemed to think Jainan’s opinion was important.

This was hardly new, though: Jainan knew that Kiem was too charming for his own good. As Kiem turned back around to resume the trek, Jainan realized with dismay that it was having more of an effect on him than he’d thought. Kiem obviously couldn’t switch the charm off, because he had inadvertently pointed it at Jainan multiple times. Jainan was getting attached to someone who had only ever wanted the appearance of a marriage. Kiem had outright told him so the first time they’d met.