There it was. I looked back at the note.Move at your convenience.
Convenience, my ass.
* **
Rhain and Dominic walked beside me.
The eastern wing was older than the one we had left. Stone showed in the lower courses instead of plaster, and the wood floors had darkened to the color of the beams overhead. The air smelled faintly of wax and woodsmoke from one of the old stoves that had probably been heating the building for a hundred and twenty winters.
The new quarters were at the end of the third-floor gallery, where the corridor narrowed and the traffic thinned to almost nothing. A brass key was already waiting in the door.
Rhain unlocked it, and the three of us went in.
The suite opened into a small entry hall, then a sitting room with a stone fireplace and enough space for a handful of people to gather casually. Beyond it, a bedroom door stood open.
The bed inside was wide, unmade, and very obviously new. Three pillows had been stacked at the headboard.
I stared at it for half a second too long. “Subtle,” I said.
Rhain’s mouth curved as he chuckled.
Dominic closed the door behind us and turned the lock from the inside. His shoulders eased one degree when the bolt slid home.
Then he crossed to the window first, because Dominic would inspect a nursery for sniper sightlines if given half a chance. He checked the frame, the latch, the angle to the gallery below, then moved through the sitting room with the same quiet efficiency, measuring the doorways, the walls, the distance between the bed and the outer room.
I watched him find the shape of the suite before I did. Not just larger quarters. Correct quarters.
Enough space for Dominic to be inside without standing over the bed. Enough separation for Rhain’s bond not to press directly against his. Enough shared air that neither channel had to stretch through a door, a corridor, and several centuries of people pretending bodies were less complicated than law.
Yuki had not moved me into safer quarters.
She had moved us somewhere the bond could breathe.
Dominic reached the outer door just as the knock came. One soft.Two firm.
He looked back, not asking permission exactly, but giving me the chance to object.
I nodded.
He unlocked the door and opened it. Yuki stood on the other side, hands folded, expression composed. Her gaze moved past Dominic to me.
“A word with you, Catalina,” she said. “In the corridor, please.”
Rhain glanced back at me.Do you want me?
I shook my head.
He nodded. He stepped aside.
I came to the door, stepped past Dominic into the corridor and let the door close behind me.
Yuki walked four paces down the corridor to the alcove at the gallery end.
She did not look at me when she began. “Your pulse is too high and you have the pallor people get near the end of the fourth day when the body has stopped asking politely and begun making formal complaints.”
I waited. All of that was true. None of it explained why Yuki had pulled me into an alcove to say it.
Yuki folded her hands in front of her, the movement too controlled to pass for calm.
