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“Your mother likes me, though.”
“My mother has been right about everything that’s mattered for four centuries.” Warmth moved through his voice he hadn’t planned on letting show, unguarded. “I’d start listening to her if I were you.”
“I already like her plan far more than I like your father’s.”
“Everyone does. It’s not a high bar.”
“She went to a matchmaker for you. Behind your back. Months before I ever met you.” Romily turned the fact over slowly, out loud, the way she turned over everything that mattered to her. “That’s either the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or a fairly serious violation of your privacy, and I honestly can’t decide which.”
“Both. It’s usually both, with my family.”
“That’s becoming a running theme with you specifically.”
“Apparently, I’m full of surprises. We’ve established this already, more than once, and I intend to keep proving it for as long as you’ll let me.”
“Your griffin bush and I bonded, by the way, while you and your father were having your moment. I named him Kevin. He didn’t object.”
“Kevin has stood in that exact spot for two hundred years without a name. You’ve improved him a great deal in one afternoon.”
“I have a gift.” She laughed, short and real, and shifted sideways in her seat until her shoulder found his arm, staying there instead of retreating back to her own side of the car. He didn’t adjust his driving to accommodate it. He simply let her stay, the whole evening finally settling into a shape that read, against every reasonable expectation the house behind them had tried to enforce, like it had gone exactly the way it needed to.
Darius texted him forty minutes later, while Romily slept against the window and the city lights started replacing the dark trees outside.
DARIUS: she told your father she was still standing. To his face. In the formal dining room. With the good CHINA out.
I was there, Norden typed back, one-handed, not taking his eyes off the road.
DARIUS: I am genuinely obsessed with this woman. On behalf of everyone who has watched you be controlled for eight hundred consecutive years — thank you.
DARIUS: also your father hasn’t stopped talking about it. I give it three days before he pretends he approved the whole time.
DARIUS: I’m starting a wager pool on how long it takes him to bring up her name unprompted at the next family function. I have money on under two minutes.
Don’t bet against my father. He’s better at long games than you give him credit for, Norden typed, and then, thumb hovering before he committed to it, put me down for four minutes. I know him better than you do.
DARIUS: this is the most fun I’ve had in decades, truly. I mean that with my whole chest, no exaggeration.
Norden didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. He glanced at Romily, asleep with her head against the window, no visible concern anywhere on her that she’d rearranged several centuries of his family’s certainty in one afternoon, and found he had nothing left to add.
FIFTEEN
ROMILY
He asked her to the roof on a Thursday, no stated reason attached, which was itself the first clue that tonight wasn’t going to follow the usual pattern.
Norden Sharpe’s Thursdays were booked solid through next quarter and possibly the one after that. She’d seen his calendar once, by accident, glowing on a tablet Elena had left open — a wall of color-coded blocks with no visible gaps, a schedule that treated free time as a design flaw to be corrected. Tonight the calendar had lost the argument, because he’d found her in the atrium at six, said “come up when you’re done,” and hadn’t offered a single detail beyond that.
She’d spent the elevator ride up running through possibilities — a work update disguised as dinner, a family complication requiring advance warning, Tarek doing anything new and alarming that needed managing before it reached her. None of the guesses had prepared her for what she found waiting, quiet and easy and utterly without agenda.
Her phone buzzed twice on the way up.
JESSA: Marco says he saw Norden leave a meeting early today. LEAVE. A MEETING. EARLY. this man has never left anything early in his documented existence
MARCO: I have a source in facilities. I have several sources in facilities. This is not a hobby, this is intelligence work
She typed back one-handed, elevator humming. Currently investigating. Will file a full report if there’s anything worth reporting.
JESSA: “if.” adorable that you still think there’s an “if” at this stage
