Page 7

She studies me more closely. “One man, maybe. Dark hair. Lower-district coat. Looked like he was trying very hard not to be seen, which naturally made him noticeable to anyone with a working brain.”

My pulse climbs. “Did the guards stop him?”

“No. He must’ve had enough human stink on him to be dismissed as harmless.”

“That is charmingly phrased.”

“That is how they think, not how I do.” She lowers her voice. “Why are you asking?”

I glance toward the window despite myself.

Mira follows the glance, and her expression sharpens. “Oh, no.”

“I have not said anything.”

“You do not have to. Your face is doing all sorts of unfortunate things.”

“My face is under excellent control.”

“Your face is usually under excellent control. Right now it looks like someone handed you a forbidden book, a loaded crossbow, and a compliment in the same breath.”

“That is oddly specific.”

“It is oddly accurate.”

I should shut this down. I should sit, summarize the west accounts, soften nothing, and pretend the pulse outside the wards was an anomaly to be filed away for later review. A sensible woman would do that. A surviving woman would do that.

Unfortunately, curiosity has always been the least obedient part of me.

I move back toward the window.

“Isolde,” Mira hisses.

“I am checking whether the wards remain disturbed.”

“That is a very tidy lie.”

“It is a professional assessment.”

“It is a terrible idea wearing spectacles.”

I almost smile. “I am not wearing spectacles.”

“You would be, if Lord Vaerith allowed you to look clever in public.”

That nearly gets me. A faint laugh presses against the back of my throat, but the pull tightens again, and humor slips beneath the heat gathering low in my body. I reach the window and look out.

He is still there.

Not at the same pane, not quite. He has moved a few steps along the wall, as if he tried to leave and failed somewhere between intention and execution. His shoulders are tight beneath his coat, and the parcel in his hand is crushed beyond use now. When he sees me return, his whole body goes still.

The pull holds.

It does more than hold. It strengthens.

Warmth rolls through me, heavy and intimate, curling through places that have no business responding to a stranger outside my employer’s window. My breath catches, and I press one palm to the stone sill, letting its coldness bite against my skin. The bond answers the contact anyway, humming through my bones with a certainty that feels almost indecent.

He lifts one hand slightly, not a wave, not a command. It is the smallest acknowledgment, half-warning and half-confession, as though he knows we are both standing at the edge of something and has no idea which of us is more likely to fall first.