Three blocks from the amphitheater, Thorne stopped.
She stopped too, half a step later, turning to look at him. He'd paused beside a small stall, at one of the late-night vendor carts that lined the path between the Market District and the residential quarter, with steam rising from copper kettlesinto the falling snow. A Cinnamite proprietor with heat-bright markings was dozing behind the counter.
Thorne spoke to the vendor in a low voice. She caught the wordspeppermintandhoneyandno milk. He did not look at her. He did not ask what she wanted. He just ordered her tea, the way she liked it. Theexactway she liked it: peppermint with honey. The vendor handed him a ceramic cup trailing fragrant steam.
He turned and extended the cup toward her.
His fingers were bare. She hadn't seen him remove the gloves. The pale skin was striped with those faint silver-white markings spiraling across his knuckles and down his fingers.
She reached for the cup.
Their fingers touched.
His were cold. Markedly cold, several degrees below what skin should feel like.
He lingered.
A fraction of a second. The smallest extension of contact beyond what the handoff required. His fingertips against hers, cold on warm. Heat lit through her belly and between her thighs, and she almost dropped the cup.
She remembered these same fingers curved around her and pressing her into him.
She took the cup. Wrapped both hands around it to hide the tremor. The ceramic was warm. His cold still ghosted across her fingertips.
"Thank you," she said, and her voice came out low.
He inclined his head. Barely.
They walked.
She didn't ask how he knew it was her favorite drink after a show. She'd never told him. She'd never told anyone here. And the possible explanation sat in her chest. He'd been watching her closely enough to learn her habits. And heremembered.
The tea was perfect. The silence was unbearable.
"I forgot how quiet this place could be late at night."
The words left her mouth before she gave them permission. And worse, they came out wrong. The vowels rounder, the consonants softer, the rhythm syncopated in a way that had nothing to do with vocal training and everything to do with the block she grew up on.
Brooklyn. Her accent. The one she'd spent thousands of dollars and years of coaching to erase, because the industry wanted a voice that came from nowhere and belonged to everyone. The one that surfaced only when she was exhausted or angry or walking through alien snow beside a man who made her feel things she couldn't control.
Her jaw locked. She took a breath, ready to repeat the sentence in her practiced voice, to smooth the rough edges back into palatability.
Thorne kept walking. His pace didn't change. His expression didn't shift. He didn't comment. Didn't look at her. Didn't acknowledge the slip at all.
She drank her tea and followed him through the snow, and did not trust the warmth spreading through her chest.
At her door she stopped and turned.
He was closer than she'd realized. A half-step behind her and to the left, his standard position, which put him near enough that the cold rolling off his body raised every fine hair on her arms. Near enough that she had to tilt her face up to find his. Snowflakes caught on his shoulders and the collar of his uniform.
She put on the smile that had gotten her through two decades of industry dinners and backstage conversations with people who wanted her voice and never her.
"Thank you. That was very kind of you."
A pause. His eyes moved across her face. The ache between her thighs pulsed, and her fingers tightened around the empty cup.
"Are you all right?" His voice, very quiet. Lower than it had been during the protocol briefing. The formality scraped thin enough that she could hear the texture underneath.
Was she all right?
