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Ryneth glanced at him. “You sound smug.”
“That’s because I’m feeling pretty damn smug, aethera. Who was the one who brought you there?”
“Who was the one who brought me to Governance classes first?” Ryneth grumbled, shivering on purpose when Daven glanced his way. His cheeks were flushed.
Damn, he looked cute like this. Happy.
And that made Daven fucking happy too.
He thought about the run that morning, the cold air in his lungs, the rhythm of his feet on the empty lanes. Running usually cleared his head, but today it hadn’t.
The bath from last night lingered instead. Ryneth leaning against him, warm and honest in a way Daven hadn’t expected.
For once, Daven didn’t want to win anything. He just wanted to figure out what he wanted.
With Ryneth.
Ryneth huffed and leaned back, staring out at the skyline. “I used to look at buildings and think people like me built them, and people like you owned them.”
Daven’s fingers tightened on the wheel. Not quite the direction he’d wanted this conversation to go. Still, a glimpse into Ryneth’s mind was something he would never refuse. “And now?”
Ryneth’s throat bobbed. “Today I sat in a class where they talked about how buildings hold and how structures fail. And it made me wonder about a lot.”
Daven breathed in slowly as the mood in the car changed. “Such as?”
“Such as the mines we have on Düren.” Ryneth stared outside. “They’re carved straight into the mountain faces without any protection. There’s nothing to hold on to when you’re lowered down. Sometimes people fall out of the lift and into the void. It’s like they don’t care. Like they know how to force tunnels into stone and send people inside, but they never build a safe way out.”
Daven watched his face as he spoke, the intensity in it, the way old memories still pulled at him.
“They say the rock holds,” Ryneth continued. “They say the mountain protects itself. But it doesn’t. When one section collapses, it takes everything with it. I understand why now.”
“Why’s that?”
He turned back to Daven. “Because there’s no shared load. No structure working together.”
Ryneth traced the edge of the dashboard with his finger. “When things collapse, it’s usually because everything was resting on one point.”
Daven’s mouth curved faintly. “You attended one lecture and you crowned yourself an engineer.”
Ryneth snorted. “I didn’t.”
“Well, you sound awfully certain. Perhaps I’m contagious.”
“No, you’re not, you ass.”
Ryneth shoved him in his side, and Daven feigned hurt with a chuckle as he parked the car.
“It just makes me think,” Ryneth continued as the elevator carried them up to the 200th floor of Daven’s penthouse.
His multi-slate lit briefly in his pocket. Ryneth stiffened hard enough for Daven to feel it, already reaching for it before the screen flashed a harmless class update. He let out a breath and shoved it away like he was annoyed at himself.
“Düren builds everything like that. The mines. The housing blocks. The factories. Everything’s one long wall. One single line. But if it cracks, the people inside carry the weight. It’s like—”
“The Ward?” Daven prompted when Ryneth trailed off.
“Yeah.” Ryneth hesitated, then huffed softly. “Or maybe I’m just talking nonsense after one class.”
“Highly possible,” Daven said dryly.
