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Through stunned laughter, she shook her head. “I am fine.”
He placed one hand on the small of her back and the other on her hands resting on her stomach. “Babe, talk to me. What is going?—”
His breath hitched.
Naia squealed as the baby’s kick rippled through her ribcage.
Ronin snapped his chin up to look at her, eyes wide. “Is that him?”
Naia nodded enthusiastically, a touch of coy playing on her lips. “Apparently, he agrees with me.”
Ronin’s expression flattened. “Or this is his way of telling you to listen to me.” With a playful smile, he tugged on the end of her silver hair.
Naia raised her fingers to his chin, guiding his mouth to hers. “No magic.”
“Fine.” His arm snaked around her waist, and he kissed her.
“How’s it coming along?” Naia placed the steaming cup of tea down on the workbench for Avi.
He sat with terrible posture, hunched over a thick book and an assortment of stones laying on the wooden surface of the bench. A star shape was drawn beneath them in a white powdered substance. In its center was a small cherry-red puddle. She’d learned over the past few months it was best not to ask whose or what poor animals’ blood it was.
“Thanks. I think I have it almost figured out,” he said, more to himself. His hair lay off to the side of his head, held in place by the sweeping of his fingers. “If I remain in the center of the spell, I can keep it going for about twenty minutes.”
Darkness rained through the glass ceiling. Lit candles flooded the room in a buttery glow.
“Good.” Naia rested against the edge of the workbench, rubbing her belly in soothing laps with her palm. “It should give us plenty of time to…”
She wasn’t sure what it would give them time to do. How would they strategize against Cassian?
Avi rotated his body on his stool and picked up his tea. He regarded her as he took a sip, brow lined with creases.
“Hey, no frowning.” He lowered his mug in his lap. “It’s all gonna work out.”
She stared down at her stomach, overcome with a rush of emotions that were partly her hormones and partly her own avalanche of concerns.
“I have little faith in most things,” she murmured.
Avi cleared his throat, sitting his mug down on the workbench and shifting around on his stool.
Naia was about to apologize for souring the mood when he said, “I met Ronin when I was sixteen. I lived out on the streets. My mom went to prison for drugs, and my dad kicked me out for taking up too much space and spending his gambling money.”
Naia analyzed his sheepish expression and the way he toyed with his earrings, as if he fought through his discomfort to open up to her. His vulnerability touched her.
“It sounds like he shouldn’t have been a father,” she said. “You deserve much better than that.”
The corner of Avi’s mouth lifted in agreement. “To get by, I stole food and money. Imagine my damn luck when I chose Ronin to pickpocket.”
Naia’s lips parted, her hand coming up over them, eyes bulging. “Oh no.” She giggled.
He laughed, crow’s feet wrinkling at the corner of his eyes. “Right? I specifically did my thieving shit on the non-magical side of the city for a reason. The fucker damn near killed me with his blood briars. I happened to have some of my homemade powder on me that acted as an explosive and gave off a rancid smoke. It gave me time to run away. Only two nights later, he tracked me down in the Valley—alleyways connecting through the city where the homeless pitch tents.”
Naia’s heart ached, imagining a younger Avi, all alone, in a flimsy shelter like what she’d seen once with Theon when she marched out of the brewery in search of Finnian.
She frowned. “I imagine you were petrified.”
An awkward chuckle rolled out of him, and he scratched the side of his tattooed arm. “I talked his ear off. He just stared at me with those intense eyes of his. I tried to play it off, tell him he had the wrong guy, and even offered him a moldy piece of bread I’d been munching on. Dude was a grade-A grump, and I thought for sure he would murder me, but he ended up taking me to get a burger.”
Naia rubbed large circles around her stomach again, tears biting at the back of her nose. “Sounds like something he’d do.”
