Page 47 of Mane Brew

“Entirely formal.” She starts walking again, and I fall into step beside her. Our shoulders brush—accidental contact, the kind that happens when two people walk close.

Neither of us moves away.

“The raid.” She goes quiet for a moment. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“We found more than we were looking for.” I take another sip of the terrible coffee. It’s growing on me. “Evidence of a conspiracy spanning forty years. Plans for an attack on the Registry. And...”

I trail off. The words stick in my throat—the suspicion I don’t want to voice, the observation I can’t stop examining.

“And?” she prompts.

“And nothing that can’t wait until morning.” I finish the coffee. Set the empty mug in her hands. “Thank you. For this.”

“For terrible coffee?”

“For being here.” The admission costs more than it should. “For knowing I’d need someone to remind me that rest is important.”

“You’re important.” The words come out simple. Direct. As unfiltered as everything else about her. “Rest is just the mechanism.”

Our shoulders brush again.

This time, I lean into it. Just slightly. Just enough to make the contact deliberate instead of accidental.

She doesn’t pull away.

We walk through the misty streets of Mistvale, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking. The coffee mug dangles from her fingers. Something in me settles into quiet contentment—a state I haven’t managed in years.

The silence should be awkward. Not long ago, I held her hand across a table and admitted that documentation had become devotion. We haven’t discussed what that means, what comes next, where we go from the acknowledgment that neither of us can ignore.

But the silence isn’t awkward. It’s comfortable. The kind of quiet that settles between people who don’t need words to understand each other.

“Leire wanted to come,” Zeph says finally. “I told her I’d handle it.”

“Why?”

She’s quiet for a moment. Her shoulder brushes mine again—deliberate, I’m almost certain. “Because I wanted to see you. Make sure you were okay.” Her voice catches, just slightly. “Because I’ve been worried about you all day, which is annoying and inconvenient and entirely your fault.”

“My fault?”

“You’re the one who held my hand and said words like ‘devotion.’” She glances at me—brief, almost shy, completely unlike her usual directness. “You can’t say things like that and expect a woman not to worry when you charge into a terrorist warehouse.”

“I was adequately protected.”

“You were leading an assault on an armed enemy position.” An edge enters her voice. “That’s not adequate protection. That’s calculated risk with potentially fatal consequences.”

“The calculations were favorable.”

“The calculations—” She stops walking. Turns to face me fully, her expression caught between frustration and longing she hasn’t voiced. “You infuriating man. Do you have any idea how many times I checked the clock today? How many times I nearly abandoned the reconstruction to come find you?”

“You should have stayed with the reconstruction. The schedule⁠—”

“The schedule can burn. The timeline can shatter. I wouldn’t care about any of it if it meant knowing you were safe.” She’s breathing hard now, her magic sparking around her in agitated bursts. “That’s what you’ve done to me, Rhodes. That’s what your patterns and your impossibly steady presence have accomplished. I care more about your safety than my own business.”

Our eyes lock.

The mist swirls around us, amber-tinged in the lamplight, waiting for whatever comes next.

“That’s remarkably inconvenient,” I hear myself say.