Page 165 of Zenith Court

I remembered. “I’m asking again.”

His eyes stayed on mine. “Can you keep the line from reading what I do not offer?”

“I think so. I could before. But I don’t know whether it will return the same.”

Jonah’s grip remained loose. “Then we take it slowly. Either of us says stop, we stop.”

“Then yes. I want you when there is nothing to hold together.”

I turned my hand in his until our palms met.

Leather warmth returned slowly. It gathered beneath his thumb, crossed the center of my wrist, and settled in a rain-dark line beside marble and green-gold. Jonah watched it form without tightening his grip.

I held the connection lightly. Rain, the quiet room, and the pressure of his hand came through. Nothing else.

I kept my hand in his until the connection steadied. When I drew back, the line remained warm. Jonah’s shoulders lowered for the first time that morning.

“All three,” Kieran said behind me, his voice unsteady.

Caspian came from the window. Kieran rose from the sill. Neither reached until I held out my free hand.

Caspian took it. Kieran covered our joined fingers. Jonah set his other palm between my shoulder blades after I nodded.

Three lines lay warm beneath my skin: marble, apple, leather.

At the window, Magnus’s signet remained facedown. No one moved to watch the door.

The kettle ticked on the brazier. Rain moved against the glass. Beyond the bolted door came footsteps and voices as Delphine and Aldric found beds, bandages, and families for the freed.

For that morning, I stayed in the small room with their hands on mine and breathed until breathing required no attention at all.

47

Astra

Gold light came through unshuttered glass—the first we had slept beside since the road began—and warmed the floorboards at the foot of the bed.

We had left the physician’s room the evening before. Two floors above the empty Conclave, one of the old lineages had abandoned a bedroom better furnished than any inn we had slept in on the road: a wide bed, a writing desk with a dry inkwell, a wardrobe still holding somebody’s second-best coat, and a rug worn thin between the mattress and the window. No one had come back to claim any of it.

Kieran had claimed the left half of the bed and part of mine, one arm heavy across my ribs. He breathed slowly against my shoulder. His injured wrist lay above the blanket, and his shoulder rested easily against my back.

Jonah slept on my other side with one hand loose over his chest. His boots were under the desk rather than beside the door.

Caspian was awake at the foot of the bed, propped on one elbow with my ankle resting in his palm. His thumb moved once over the old scar and went still when he saw me watching.

“How long?” I asked.

“Not long.”

“That means nothing when you say it.”

“I’m learning to do nothing. Precision would defeat the purpose.”

Kieran spoke into the pillow without opening his eyes. “If Ashford has discovered leisure before breakfast, nobody startle him. We may never see it again.”

Jonah’s mouth shifted at one corner. His eyes remained closed. “You’ve been awake for ten minutes.”

“I’ve been resting brilliantly for ten minutes.”