Page 47

They left at eleven. Fiora hugged her at the door, as if she’d heard everything Althea hadn’t said and loved her for it anyway. Althea went upstairs, reorganized her shoes, made tea she didn’t drink, and read almost nothing. The warmth in her palms, quiet all evening, began its restless climb toward midnight and hadn’t stopped by two.

The surge hit at two in the morning.

It wasn’t catastrophic, nor the intense, instantaneous type that demands apothecaries and elaborate systems. Instead, it was a milder, gradual heat—a gentle, creeping warmth starting at her sternum and spreading outward, with her palms holding a persistent warmth that wouldn’t fade despite her efforts. The restless pressure suggested her nervous system had chosen sleep and already moved on, leaving her no say.

She had been awake for an hour. The apartment’s familiar sounds now felt like a routine — the creak on the second stair, the stubborn window before it finally opened, and the radiator tick in the middle of the night. She reorganized the kitchen cabinet twice, made tea, and left it untouched. She lined up her shoes by the door in the order she’d last worn them; it might be strong organizational skills or a subtle cry for help.

Her phone lit.

You’re up. Come over.

No question mark. It wasn’t a question. She read it three times, two of which were unnecessary.

He’d texted her first. She’d been awake for an hour, and he’d texted her first, which meant he’d known before she’d thought to reach out, which meant⁠—

Stop. Put on your jacket.

The internal debate lasted forty-five seconds.

She put on her jacket.

The northern residential area was peaceful at this time, with lampposts casting amber glows on the empty sidewalk. She strolled with her hands in her pockets, feeling the warmth in her palms, constant all night—lingering despite her not choosing it, as though the magic had its own plans she hadn’t approved.

She’d been past his street before. She’d looked at the house from the outside a couple of times in that way that was absolutely not what it was.

The coastal house perched on a hill at the edge of the neighborhood, crafted from dark wood and stone, built to endure decades of Atlantic storms and beyond, a testament to durability. The ocean’s sound was louder here — not muffled through town or distance but direct and nearby, water that predates the house and will outlast it. A light glowed in the kitchen.

She raised her hand to knock.

The door opened.

He was there when her knuckles hit the wood, naturally—that was Drayce’s way, always seeming to be everywhere before she arrived. At least three weeks earlier, she’d chosen to stop finding this unsettling. So far, she’d only succeeded about forty percent of the time.

“You knew I was coming.”

He stepped back to let her in. “I texted you.”

“Before the text.”

“Yes.”

She walked in.

He was awake. At this hour, in this house, the professional edge of him was still there underneath — it always was — but the rest of him was visible too. The part that fixed radios because it needed problems to solve. The part that built benches in the wrong place and left them.

She was, she acknowledged privately, in a great deal of trouble.

The kitchen smelled of coffee and eggs, with the faint tang of machine oil drifting in from the workspace through the doorway. He went to the stove when she followed him in, moving through his own kitchen with the same economy she’d seen on patrol — like he knew exactly where everything was and hadn’t had to think about it in years. She sat at the table he’d built and watched his hands.

She’d noticed his hands before. On the boardwalk railing, on the cliff path, and correcting her stance in the training clearing. In his kitchen, they were doing the most mundane thing — cracking eggs, setting a pan — with the same unhurried competence as everything else, and she was absolutely not thinking about this.

He made two plates without asking. He didn’t look at her when he did. He did it the plain way you do things once you’ve already decided the person is staying — no need to make it into a moment.

The list got longer.

He set a plate before her and sat across from her with his own. The ocean’s low, steady presence seeped through the kitchen window. The table between them seemed perfectly sized yet somehow inconveniently substantial.

“You didn’t have to feed me.”