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“Your men can stay,” I say. “But not in the kitchen. Not unless I invite them. I don’t want to come down at six in the morning and find a stranger by my stove.”

“Done.”

“The locks are fine. Papa will be spinning in his grave, but they’re fine.” I swallow. “And I still take food out to the gatehouse at night. The men on the night shift are cold, and they’re bored, and some of them have been working for my family since before I was born. I’m not stopping.”

His jaw tightens. I see him decide not to argue.

“Then you text me first,” he says. “Every time. And Leo walks you there and back.”

“Who’s Leo?”

“The man in the car you keep waving at.”

I feel my face go warm. “Fine.”

“Fine,” he agrees.

I wait for him to push for more. To tell me I’m being unreasonable. He doesn’t. He just picks up his mug and takes a mouthful of cold, lemonless tea, and makes a small face at it.

I laugh. I can’t help it. It comes out wet and a little shaky.

“I didn’t know you could disagree with someone,” I say, “and they’d just... listen.”

He sets the mug down very slowly.

“You can disagree with me any time you like, Galana,” he says. “I’ll always listen. It doesn’t mean I’ll always agree.”

“And when you don’t?”

“Then we’ll argue.” Something warm moves at the back of his eyes. “And I suspect you’ll win more often than either of us expects.”

He stays.

He tells me it’s only for tonight, while the new system finishes calibrating. He’ll sleep on the sofa in Papa’s study, by the screens. I make up the sofa with clean sheets and the good pillow, the one with the feathers, and then I go to bed and lie awake for two hours listening to the house.

At one in the morning, I give up and go downstairs.

I tell myself I’m going to make warm milk. I’m in my nightgown and Mama’s old cardigan and my fluffy socks. The hallway is dark except for a thin line of blue light under the study door.

I don’t make warm milk.

I knock on the study door, very softly.

It opens almost immediately. He’s still dressed, shirt open at the throat, his feet bare on Papa’s rug. The screens throw blue light across one side of his face. He looks at me. My socks, my bare legs, the cardigan I’m clutching closed at my chest. His eyes go darker.

“You should be asleep,” he says.

“So should you.” My heart’s beating so hard I can feel it in my throat. “I came down anyway.”

He doesn’t move. His hand stays on the door handle.

“Galana,” he says, very low. “If you come into this room, I’m not going to be careful with you.”

“I know that too.”

“Tell me what you want.”

Nobody ever asks me what I want.