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"That seems disproportionate."

"It's exactly proportionate." She squeezed my shoulder once and stood, already reaching for the trays cooling on the counter. "Now finish your drink. We have food to deliver and a reputation to maintain."

We packed everything into baskets and carried it between the houses in the dark, the gap in the fence lit only by the glow spilling from Nephrite's back windows and the fire still burning low in the yard. My feet found the ground less precisely than they had that morning, and I was fairly sure I'd laughed at something Elira said that wasn't actually funny, purely because laughing felt good and stopping felt unnecessary.

A ribbon of smoke met me halfway across the grass, curling up from nothing and resolving into two ember eyes at knee height before I'd finished registering he was there at all.

"Hi Ash." I nearly tipped sideways reaching down for him, and Ashter pressed solid and warm against my side to keep me upright. "I brought food."

He looked up at me with an unmistakable question in his face he had perfected over the years.

"Not for you. You've eaten enough tonight to feed a garrison."

He made a low, wounded sound and trailed after me anyway, unconvinced but unwilling to miss whatever happened next.

The yard opened up in firelight and noise. Someone had started a game involving Kellan's mapped-out grid of stones and far too much shouting about whether Caelan's last throw counted, and half of Nephrite and Argentite sat scattered across the grass in various states of amusement. Nykos had lost the argument about the card game to Elira before we'd even set the food down, judging by the expression on his face. Taren claimed the largest plate before anyone else could reach it, ignoring Kellan's protest that seniority should count for something. Corian sat in one of the low chairs near the fire with Ashter's stone empty beside him now, one of Corian's hands resting on nothing at all, still moving in the same absent motion out of habit before he seemed to notice and let it fall still.

I stopped and looked at that for a second longer than I meant to.

"You lost your favorite spot," I told Ashter.

He trotted back toward Corian's chair without hesitation, resettling against the leg of it as if he'd never left, and Corian's hand found the ridge of his back again without either of them making anything of it.

Nykos sat closest to the fire, arms crossed, watching the stone game with the specific disapproval he reserved for anything involving Kellan and dice. I drifted toward him without deciding to, the way I'd stopped deciding most things tonight, and dropped down onto the grass beside his chair.

"You're frowning."

"I'm always frowning."

"You're frowning extra."

"That's not a measurable quantity."

"I can measure it." I reached up and pressed one finger between his eyebrows, right into the crease that lived there permanently, and he went very still, the same way Ashter had the first time I'd tried something similar on him. "There. Right there. Extra frown."

"Are you drunk?"

"A little."

"A lot." There was obvious laughter in the words.

"A concerning amount," I agreed, and he almost smiled, the corner of his mouth twitching before he caught it and put it away again. I patted his cheek once, entirely too pleased with myself, and pushed back to my feet before he could decide whether to be annoyed about it.

Corian's chair sat a few steps further on, firelight catching the strands that had worked loose from his hair over the course of the evening. I stopped in front of him and studied the knot at the back of his head with the focus I usually reserved for actual threats.

"Your hair's crooked."

"My hair is fine."

"It's crooked. I can fix it."

"Jade."

"I'm very good with my hands."

Somewhere behind me Alex made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh, and Corian's ears went faintly red in a way the firelight didn't quite explain. I reached up before he could stop me, tugging at the knot until several more strands worked free, which had not been the intended result, and Corian caught my wrist gently between two fingers before I could make it any worse.

"I think that's enough hairdressing for tonight."