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“Yes!” Fia said with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm than was necessary. It was just such a relief that Andromeda wasn’t looking through her. Putting as much distance between her and the mirror as she could, Fia blew a kiss to Finnick, then crossed to Andromeda. “Or rather, no. I should work on that spell for more time. I should cast it again—”

“No.” Penbrook’s voice drifted in from the suite’s sitting room, soft but certain.

“No,” Andromeda agreed without hesitation as she tugged Fia from the bedroom. “We aren’t taking any more days from you. And the rest… well, we’ll figure things out after the masque.”

“After?” Fia asked hopefully, wanting so much to believe they had time for everything.

“I have a promise to keep too,” Penbrook said from somewhere deeper in the sitting room, as if his word—to Fia—mattered to him as much as his life.

She glanced to the side, heart skipping as she sighted Penbrook for the first time that evening. He looked devastatingly dashing.

Wearing an impeccably tailored suit of black, he stood by the window, the light beyond already softening. His gaze traveled over her from head to toe, and though the mirror had denied her a reflection, right then she felt so completely seen.

His awareness of her, the beseeching look in his blue-ringed eyes, twisted her insides. She didn’t know what to say to him, and so her words fell carelessly.

“What happened to the scratch Finnick gave you?”

Penbrook didn’t reply, only let the illusion he’d cast flit away for a moment before once again concealing the small cut.

“I’ll go check on the carriage,” Andromeda said, very obviously wanting to excuse herself from whatever this was between them.

When she’d gone, Penbrook tipped his head, and Fia could better see the dark circles hounding his eyes. Could see the effort it took for him to act as if everything was fine, the way he leaned his hand against the window frame, the way his breaths came slow.

“You haven’t opened the package yet,” he said.

She’d forgotten she was holding it, and rather than find an excuse to abandon the gift, she simply unwrapped it. The tissue fell at her feet, and in the box she found a thin book—the cover a deep blue, the contents a mystery. There wasn’t any title.

“It’s far from complete, I know. It isn’t the same.” Penbrook came closer, a familiar laziness in each casual step that did not match the trepidation in his voice. “This book isn’t the one you were looking for. Tonight though, maybe tonight…” He stopped himself. “Well, anyway, one thing at a time.”

Fia shook her head, not yet understanding. She turned back the cover of the unnamed book and found gently handled pages, some crinkled then forced flat, some stained with spilled ink (or maybe that was blackberry jam), some that smelled of jasmine and woodsmoke, others with dog-eared corners or underlined passages, and a few that fluttered when touched.

But all of them, all of them, contained spells written by the same hand.

Her mother’s hand.

Fia stared at the open page, at the faded ink and the particular curl of her mother’s script, and she could almost hear the scoring of the pen and Sable’s murmuring. Small details she wanted always to remember, which time had already tried smoothing away.

“I know some of the pages are a bit of a mess. I’m sorry,” Penbrook went on. “But that shows they’ve been well used, doesn’t it? Well loved.”

Fia laughed softly and unexpectedly, feeling well loved, though that wasn’t at all what he meant. She lifted her chin. “You’re sorry?”

“I’d hoped to gather more.” His careful words sounded like an apology he had no reason to offer. Not for this. “But not everyone was willing to part with them, even at a price—”

“Penn,” she whispered, but it was enough to quiet him. Only she still didn’t know what to say. How could she express to him how much it meant to hold her mother’s spells in her hands? To smell the rosy scent of the pages?

And how much it meant that he’d so unexpectedly gathered them.

Putting together this book had taken time, the most precious thing he had. He hadn’t collected these pages to gain her forgiveness. He’d searched for them before all this—she’d even caught him at it, though she hadn’t realized at the time—going back and back in the shop’s ledger, and then tracking down the individual spells. As a kindness.

Tears sprang to Fia’s eyes.

Penbrook winced. “Did I overstep?”

She couldn’t speak. Instead, she threw herself against his chest, the book smooshed between them. A moment passed, and then his arms found their way around her. He held her close, no unnecessary space—no more lies—between them.

“So, you like it?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she sniffed, and for a moment she forgot she was mad at him. Felt the waste of all that anger. “More than I can ever say. Thank you.”