Page 74 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

Caspian laughed. He got up, then offered a hand down to her. “I know better than to press my luck with you,” he said.

That night, she stayed up late, Caspian’s magelight casting shadows over her paper as she transcribed Gail’s note to Celestine in a new cipher. It was an odd thing, just a list, almost like the reports she’d recovered from his spies. It was a list of years, names, and letters that made no sense to her, even when detangled:

[771] Rasira–N

[773] Aluna (M)–L

[778] Isan (T)–S

[802] Carnelion–CS

[800] Harkan (W)–E

[804] Marget (M) - L

[815] Grakima–S

[853] Taran–N

[853] Ilona (M) - CS

[901] Morak–E

[901] Amorna (M)–S

[903] Isan (T)–CS

[907] Jense (W) - E

[917] Neirin–L

It went on for pages and pages, Nore’s head swimming as she tried to find any meaning in it. She was grateful, this time, that finding meaning was not her job. Her job was just to transcribe, to convey, to leave the work to Celestine.

“Finch,” Caspian said groggily from the bed when she was nearly finished with her code. Nore glanced over at him. He’d spent half the night telling her about Terlo and discussing the logistics of their plan to get on the Isle but had retired a couple of hours ago.

“What?”

“There will be time,” he murmured. He cast the blankets off her side of the bed, one muscled arm reaching across the empty space. “Come to sleep.”

She stretched her fingers and thought about bickering because they always bickered. It felt more natural to bicker than to set aside her pen, gather the magelight in her hands, and cross the room to the bed. Caspian looked up at her from the pillow, and it was one of those moments in which it felt as if no time had passed at all.

Nore wondered what would happen if she ran her fingers down Caspian’s jaw, his throat, skimmed her thumb down the center of his chest, following the dusting of dark hair that thinned to a line over his stomach. If she let the strap of her slip fall fully. If she suffocated the magelight and let that familiarity grip her, in the dark. If she sank her fingers into Caspian’s hair—gods knew, she recalled the silk of it between her fingers—and drew his mouth to her own.

It was only exhaustion, she knew. Only the challenge and that creeping familiarity, the ache of loneliness. It had been so long since she’d taken someone else into her bed that it only made sense that Caspian, whose body she feared she still knew as well as her own, would set her blood alight.

Nore slid herself into bed. Caspian did not turn away. Instead, he reached for her—and her heart lurched for a half a moment before she realized he was reaching for the magelight. He pressed down on it, dissolving the light between them. Nore was hyperconscious of his body there next to her.

“Thank you,” she said, “for helping me.”

“You would be doing this whether I help you or not.”

“Take the compliment.”

He laughed. “It’s not a compliment, when you are proud of how good and docile I can be,” he said. In the dark, his voice held the edge of danger. “Believe it or not, I don’t underestimate you. If you want to be on that Isle, you will find a way there.”

Nore shifted. He was not wrong—and for the first time, she wondered if the things she wanted were ever selfless at all.

As she waited for a response, she wrote to Idistran vineyards, searching for new wares. Every day, she walked to the harbor and found the post ships bound for the Isle and the continent; every day, she handed a new stack of letters over.