"You are pushing me."
"You weigh four hundred pounds. I'm not pushing you anywhere."
"Three-eighty."
"Oh, excuse me. My mistake. Totally reasonable."
She scrubs harder. The towel catches on a ridge of scar tissue and she softens immediately, tracing around it with careful pressure, and that small mercy does something to my sternum that no battlefield medic could diagnose.
I take a fresh towel and turn back to face her. Wet the cloth under the tap. Lift her chin with one knuckle.
"Hold still."
She goes quiet.
I wipe the chocolate from her throat in slow, careful strokes. Clean the flour from her cheekbones. Brush a smear of vanilla frosting from the shell of her ear. Her brown eyes track my face the entire time, wide and soft and steady. No flinching. No looking away from the scars. From the parts of me that make humans cross to the other side of the street.
She just stands there and lets me clean frosting off her ear like it is the most ordinary thing in the world.
Something unfamiliar settles into my chest.
Not the sharp readiness of a contract. Not the heavy alertness of a patrol. Not the flat numbness of camp between missions. Something warm and low and even, like coals banked in a fireplace after everyone has gone to bed. Steady heat. No urgency. No vigilance.
Peace.
I have been a mercenary for twenty-nine years. I have guarded caravans through the Ashveil Pass. I have held a bridge alone against fourteen armed men. I have slept in ditches and eaten cold rations and broken my tusk on a siege tower gate.
I have never known this.
I wipe a last streak of flour from her collarbone. Her pulse thumps against my fingertip. Slow and trusting.
She grabs a fresh towel and stretches up to scrub my jaw. Her tongue pokes out in concentration. I dip my chin to give her better access.
"You missed a spot," she says.
"Where."
She presses her lips to the corner of my mouth. Quick. Warm. Gone.
"There."
The cooling unit hums. Crushed berries bleed purple across the floor. My chest holds something I don't have a mercenary term for.
I don't need one.
The banquet hall clock chimes.
Magnolia's head snaps toward the sound. The color drains from her face so fast she goes from flushed pink to paper white in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
"What time is it?"
I count the chimes. One. Two. Three.
"Three o'clock."
"Three o'clock."
"That is what I said."
