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My throat tightened.

Silas reached over and touched one broad fingertip to the bird’s raised tail. “She builds wherever she can find a place.”

I looked at him. “That is aggressively flattering.”

“Good.”

“When did you finish it?”

“Yesterday, while you were in the Archive.”

“And you carried it all the way here?”

“I was going to leave it on the step.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He looked at me then, holding my gaze with the same steady brown eyes I had grown far too fond of.

“Because I wanted to give it to you myself.”

The words caught somewhere under my ribs.

No one had ever made anything for me before, not anything that had required hours of patient work and thought. I did not know how to tell him what that meant to me without making it sound smaller than it felt.

I set the bird carefully on the windowsill, facing the dark sea.

Silas shifted his weight. “I should go.”

He started to stand, and the thought of him walking out suddenly felt unbearable.

“Stay,” I said.

He stopped.

The word had come out before I had time to question it, but once it was there, I had no desire to take it back. I did not want him leaving another quiet act of kindness behind while taking himself away.

Silas glanced toward the door before looking back at me. “Wren.”

“I know what I’m asking.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. If I stay, I’m not going to sit on the floor beside you all night and pretend I don’t want more.”

Heat moved through me so quickly that I had to steady my breathing. “What do you mean? What do you want to do?”

His jaw tightened before he answered.

“I want...” His voice had gone rougher. “I want many things.”

I stared at him.

“Like?”

“Like touch you.”

Silas had carried me when I could not walk. He had protected me, sat beside me morning after morning, and made room for me in the quiet parts of his life. Through all of it, he had never given me any reason to believe that he wanted to touch me.

“You want to touch me?”