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The kitchen went quiet for a second, and I immediately regretted every word of that sentence.

Then Elira laughed, low and delighted, and reached over to squeeze my arm.

"There she is."

"I didn't mean to say that."

"I know. That's the best part."

Liora came around the counter and sat on the stool beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine, and the contact didn't send my whole body into the old bracing reflex the way it would have only weeks ago. I noticed that distantly, the way I noticed most things about myself lately. Small changes, stacking up somewhere I hadn't been paying attention.

"You know how we started, don't you?" Liora asked.

"Started what?"

"This." She gestured vaguely, encompassing the kitchen, the house, the whole tangled arrangement next door that I'd stopped questioning weeks ago. "All of us."

"I assumed you'd always been like this."

Elira laughed. "Twenty years ago none of us had even met. I was seeing two of them. Liora was seeing three, Mira was doing someone else. We all thought we were being terribly discreet about it, and then one very awkward dinner happened where everybody realized we were all seeing the same people, and instead of anyone storming out, we just sort of merged."

"There was shouting," Liora said.

"There was some shouting."

"Taren cried."

"Taren still cries about it if you bring up the wrong anniversary."

"That's not a plan," I said. "That's an accident."

"Most good things are." Liora reached for my cup and refilled it. "Nobody sat us down and told us how it was supposed to work. We just kept choosing each other, one awkward dinner at a time, until the choosing stopped feeling awkward. It's fine if you don't know what you want yet. Nobody handed us a plan either. We figured it out by not deciding too fast."

"I don't know how to do this," I said. "I don't even know how to date. Nobody ever taught me that. There wasn't exactly a lesson for it between combat drills and Council assessments."

I heard myself say it a full breath after the words were already out, and by then it was too late to take any of it back.

Elira laughed so hard she had to put her cup down, and Liora's mouth twitched into something between sympathy and delight.

"You said that out loud," Elira managed.

"I'm aware."

"That might be the most honest thing you've said all night."

I put my head down on my folded arms against the counter, mortified, and Liora's hand landed between my shoulder blades, warm and steady.

"Hey."

I lifted my head.

Her expression had shifted into something more serious, the teasing pulled back just enough that I knew she meant whatever came next.

"Nothing is stopping you," she said. "Not us. Not whatever the Council spent years telling you about what you were allowed to want. If any of those four idiots next door mess this up, mistreat you, string you along or make you feel like you have to pick, I have a spoon with all their names on it."

"A spoon."

"A very large spoon."