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I picked up a pair in her size, turned and went to see if Alex had any opinion worth hearing, and stopped outside the curtain instead.

"I don't know," Jade was saying.

"That's fine," Alex said, his tone gentler than I was used to hearing. "You don't have to know."

"There's too many of them."

"There's a lot, yeah."

"I don't know which ones I'm supposed to want."

Fabric shifted behind the curtain. I stayed where I was, gloves still in hand, close enough to hear and not quite willing to make myself known.

"You're not supposed to want any of them," Alex said. "That's the whole point. Nobody's grading this. There's no wrong answer sitting behind a desk somewhere deciding if you picked correctly."

"There's always a wrong answer."

"Not here." Something in his voice had gone quieter, steadier, the version of Alex that showed up rarely enough that I'd learned to pay attention when it did.

"You can walk out with everything Halver picked and nothing else. You can walk out with one shirt. You can walk out with nothing and we go home and try again next week, or never, and none of us care. I just want you to be happy with whatever you decide. That's the whole requirement."

Silence stretched long enough that I nearly stepped back before I heard her again.

"That's not how anything has ever worked."

"I know," Alex said. "That's why I'm telling you."

Something shifted behind the curtain, slower than before, less like someone fighting a decision and more like someone finally being allowed to make one.

I stood there a second longer than I needed to, gloves folded over my arm, and let myself feel something close to approval. Alex talked more than the rest of us combined and said less of substance most days, but he had a way of finding exactly the right handful of words when it mattered, delivered light enough that Jade never had to brace against them.

I didn't go in. Whatever was happening behind that curtain belonged to the two of them, and I had gloves to pay for and a squad waiting.

The seamstress rang up the gloves without comment, wrapped them in paper before I could change my mind, and I tucked the small parcel into my coat where nobody would think to look for it. Not today. Some other time, when giving it to her wouldn't turn into something the whole squad felt entitled to witness.

I went to find Corian and Halver instead, and waited with them until Jade came back out.

She emerged eventually in dark trousers and a deep blue shirt, her braid loosened from changing, several black strands falling against her cheek. The blue made her eyes brighter than I'd ever noticed before.

I forgot the rest of the shop existed.

"That one," I said, before Alex could speak.

Jade looked down at herself. "Why?"

Because I'd become unreasonably interested in the color of her eyes, which was not an answer I intended to give in a shop full of people, three of whom would make my life unbearable if they heard it.

"It isn't black," I said instead.

"Compelling." Her mouth curved as she turned toward the mirror.

Alex caught my eye over her head and raised both eyebrows. I let a thin edge of telepathic pressure brush his mind, just enough to promise consequences, and he grinned and kept his mouth shut.

Jade tried the green jacket next and discovered six inner pockets. By the fourth her objections had already weakened. At the sixth she looked at Halver, who gave nothing away.

She bought almost everything Halver had given her. She rejected every dress, which Alex accepted only after she threatened to buy one for him instead. At the counter, the seamstress showed her how to use the coin crystal properly.

"It comes directly from the account?"