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"You're staring," Halver said, appearing beside me with a plate of something that smelled better than anything Taren had ever made.

"I'm observing."

"That's the same thing with worse manners."

I didn't have an answer for that, so I ate instead, and watched Jade lean back on her hands and tip her face toward the fire while Elira said something that made even Nykos's mouth twitch. She still didn't talk much. Still watched more than she spoke, still tracked the door and the wall and every new voice the way she always had. But she was here, on the wall, close enough to reach, laughing at something a woman she'd known for weeks had said, instead of standing at the edge of the yard with her back to a corner and a knife loose in her hand.

That was new. That was hers.

The meat came off the fire an hour later, and everyone crowded around Taren's makeshift table arguing about who deserved the first cut, Kellan claiming seniority, Caelan claiming ownership of the yard itself, Dax claiming guest status until Corian pointed out he'd invited himself. Jade ended up with a plate somehow, handed to her by Taren without ceremony, the same way he fed everyone in this yard whether they'd asked for it or not.

Liora appeared at some point without my noticing, quiet as always, and settled beside Jade with the ease of someone who'd learned exactly how much space to leave. Elira joined a moment later, dropping down on Jade's other side hard enough to jostle her plate.

"We're short on sides," Liora said. "Mira's making a face about it already."

"There's enough bread."

"There's never enough bread when Kellan's within reach of it."

Elira nudged Jade's shoulder with her own.

"Come help us fix that before Mira decides to lecture someone about planning ahead."

Jade glanced at her finished plate, then at the fire, then back at the two women waiting without any real urgency for her answer.

"Fine."

She stood, handed her plate to Halver without either of them making it a thing, and fell into step between Liora and Elira as they headed for the gap in the fence, Elira already talking about something involving too much garlic and Liora saying nothing at all, which seemed to be exactly the balance Jade needed.

I watched her go until the dark swallowed the three of them on the other side of the wall, her laugh drifting back once, quick and unguarded, before the sound of Argentite's kitchen door closing cut it off.

"You're doing it again," Halver said.

"Doing what."

He didn't answer. He didn't need to. I turned back to the fire instead, and told myself the heat climbing up my neck was just proximity to the flames.

It wasn't, and I knew it wasn't, and for tonight that was enough of an answer.

Chapter Thirteen: A Spoon for Their Heads

Jade

Argentite's kitchen smelled like a house that had never once worried about scorch marks on the ceiling.

Herbs hung in dried bunches from a rack over the stove, and the wall beside the pantry held a row of knives. Cuts in the wood where someone had clearly given up trying to use a cutting board decades ago. Nothing matched. The chairs around the table were four different heights, the pots hung from hooks that looked added one at a time over the years rather than installed all at once, and a stack of someone's mending sat folded on the windowsill next to a jar of what I was fairly sure used to be garlic. A row of mismatched mugs lined the shelf above the sink, each one clearly belonging to a different person, none of them labeled, all of them exactly where their owner expected to find them.

Nephrite's kitchen still looked like something arranged for inspection most days, four people who'd grown up being watched keeping their shared spaces tidy out of habit rather than any actual rule. This house had given up on tidy generations ago and built something better in its place.

Liora set a knife and a pile of vegetables in front of me without asking whether I wanted to help.

"Small dice. Not decorative. We're feeding people, not impressing them."

"I can dice."

"I know you can. I've watched you throw things at a wall for the last few weeks."

Elira laughed from the other side of the counter, where she had flour on one forearm and no visible plan for getting it off. She was the youngest of the three women who ran the house next door, though calling anyone in their forties young felt like a technicality she enjoyed.