Food had always arrived without explanation.
Not with fanfare, not with the sound of footsteps or the clatter of preparation—simply there when the bell rang, as if the tower conjured meals from the same patient magic it used to keep the floors clean and the linens fresh. I had stopped wondering about the mechanism years ago. There had been no one to ask and the tower never offered explanations, only routine.
Tonight, three places were set.
I stood in the doorway for a moment before entering, looking at the table. The symmetry of it pressed against something I had no clean name for—three cups, three plates, three sets of utensils arranged with the same precise care as always. The tower had done this without being asked. It had simply known.
I was not certain whether that comforted or unsettled me.
Both, probably.
I took my seat at the head of the table. The blanket was still around my shoulders and I didn’t remove it.
Thane sat without hesitation, reached for the bread, and ate with the controlled efficiency of a man who had learned not to trust food to remain. He kept his attention moving—to the room, to me, to Malric—but his gaze returned to me most often, and each time it did, he looked away quickly, as if afraid of what he might give away if he held the contact too long.
Malric didn’t sit.
He stood with his arms folded and his weight distributed like a man waiting for the attack he had decided was coming, regardless of evidence to the contrary. He looked at the food the way he had looked at me earlier—as a variable whose full implications he had not yet resolved. His gaze moved between the table, the walls, the corners of the room, mapping geometry he had already mapped.
I watched him from the edge of my vision and kept my face arranged around mild disinterest.
His scent reached me anyway. It didn’t ask permission and it didn’t require proximity. It simply existed in the room, the way all things in this tower existed once they arrived: completely. Sun-warmed stone and steel worn smooth, something grounded beneath both, old in a way that felt less like age and more like deep roots.
There was a pull to him that scared me and excited me at the same time.
I took a careful bite and chewed, and kept my attention on my plate.
Thane’s questions were patient. He asked about the tower, about the food, about how the rooms arranged themselves, and his voice had the quality of someone who was genuinely curious rather than mining for tactical information. When I answered, he listened. Not in the way Father listened—waiting for themoment my words became useful or threatening—but with the whole of his attention turned toward me as if what I said mattered in itself.
I didn’t know what to do with that kind of listening. It made something in my chest ache in a way I didn’t examine.
Malric’s questions were different. He didn’t phrase them as questions. He stated things and waited for me to confirm or deny, more of an interrogation. But I was accustomed to his tone and style. He was like Father, a comparison I sensed he would reject. His gaze when it landed on me was sharp and assessing, and beneath the assessment, something else—something that moved too quickly for me to catch and examine.
I watched him watch Thane.
Not obviously. But the awareness was there, constant and focused, tracking Thane’s movements with a knowledge so ingrained it no longer looked like watching. He knew the rhythm of Thane’s breathing, the shift of his weight, the way his shoulders changed when something concerned him. Their bodies angled toward each other without consultation, covering the other’s blind spots from years of shared instinct.
The observation sat in me and turned over slowly.
When I looked at Malric again, his gaze met mine and the air in the room changed. Not aggression—something more precise than that. A flicker, barely present, gone before I could fully name it.
My pulse skipped.
Heat moved low in my belly, a throbbing pressure that I had never experienced before, and I set my fork down, took a slow breath, and directed my attention back to my plate.
“You’re staring,” Malric said.
I looked up at him. “You’re standing.”
Beside me, Thane made a sound he shaped into something neutral that didn’t quite get there.
Malric’s expression tightened. “Eat.”
The word landed like a command—brisk, automatic, the tone of a man who expected the people around him to order themselves according to his assessment of what was needed.
Something old rose in me. Not anger, exactly. Something more tired than anger, and more certain.
“I am,” I said. Evenly. Without looking away.
