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This was the main reason why Friday was Signy’s favorite day of the week. It was such a relief to lock her door and be alone.

Chapter 767 Signy, Cypsela

A hand brushed the nape of her neck; a soft kiss followed. Signy closed her eyes and bent her head forward, welcoming more of the same. “Hey, you,” she said.

“Hey,” Cora replied. She craned her head over Signy’s shoulder to kiss her cheek, her jaw, the curve of her ear. “How ’bout breakfast?”

“Oh,” Signy said. Right. Breakfast. She blinked, feeling like she’d only walked into the garden moments ago. But Cora was awake and dressed, and . . . yes, she had brought food. Signy looked back at the soil sensor readouts she’d been studying. When she looked away again, she realized her vision was embossed with the glowing ghosts of pH data and table borders.

How long had she been at her workbench?

Cora grinned at Signy’s confusion. “I can fetch you some clothes, too. Though I’m certainly not complaining.”

Signy didn’t care about her apron-and-clogs ensemble, and she knew Cora didn’t mind, either. “No, don’t go,” she said, taking Cora’s hand. She kissed her wife’s knuckles and smiled. “What’d you make?”

Chapter 6 Signy, Fortune

Signy settled into her chair—one of those wheeled, ergonomic things supposedly good for your spine—and rolled up to the seed printer. It was only a shop-sized model, not a big industrial monster, but even so, it filled a large chunk of the back room. The bulk of the machine was arranged in a sort of hutch around an integrated workstation, with the hopper, water lines, and power supply to the left, the printer itself to the right, and a collection bin alongside. A clunky setup, but a reliable one. That quality mattered infinitely more to Signy than aesthetics.

She habitually kept her workstation clear of anything she didn’t find useful. There was a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a stylus, a pot of tea on a warming plate, a clay mug handmade for her by a customer, and a sketch pad for when she needed to doodle and think. Doodling was very important—not only because it kept her mind going if and when she got stuck, but because the sketch pad was where her to-do list was hidden. Her real to-do list. The whiteboard on the wall behind her, with its fertilizer schedules and appointment reminders, was there for the sake of appearances. Everything she actually needed to know, she drew.

Chapter 768 Signy, Cypsela

It didn’t take much rearranging to make room on the workbench for the breakfast tray. Signy pushed aside her keyboard, her mouse, her stylus, her empty warming plate, her sketch pad. “God, I adore you,” Signy said as she eyed the golden-brown hashcakes flocked with vegetable confetti, plus toast and fresh-pressed juice.

“I think I put too much lemon in the juice,” Cora said.

“I doubt that,” Signy replied. Cora was a wonder in the kitchen, and her criticisms of her own work were far too harsh. Signy took a fork and one of the plates. As she did so, her stomach audibly growled. Apparently she had been up for a while. “Did I wake you?”

“No. Well . . . kind of, but I went right back to sleep. Strawberries needed you, huh?”

“No, a bee.” Signy ate a bite of her hashcakes, closed her eyes in appreciation, then took another forkful before she’d swallowed the first.

Cora watched Signy’s face intently as she chewed. “Yeah?” she asked.

Signy answered with an emphatic nod. “Mmm.” The hashcakes were crispy on the outside, starchy soft in the middle. In the sudden presence of carbs and fats and vitamins, Signy stopped caring about soil pH—temporarily—and began to feast.

Cora nodded happily, then took a bite herself. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I did good with these.”

“You did great with these,” Signy said. She drank a sip of her juice. “And this is not too much lemon.”

Cora shrugged in acquiescence as she continued to eat. She swallowed, paused, considered. “Sorry, can you go back to the part where you said a bee needed you?”

“There was a bee on my pillow this morning,” Signy said.

“In our room?”

“Where else?”

“How’d it get there?”

“I don’t know. I was wondering if you could check the door seals and figure it out.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll give the duct screens a going-over, too. Maybe one needs patching.”

Air ducts. Signy hadn’t considered the air ducts. This was exactly why Cora was better at this kind of thing. “Oh god, do you think there’s more of them in there?” Signy pictured a duct full of lost and dying insects, and immediately hated the idea.

“I sure hope not,” Cora said, tucking her food into her cheek. “That’d be so sad. But, all the more reason to make sure they’re sealed up.”