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As an afterthought, he picked up some soil mixed with the slime. Maybe it was somehow contributing to the strange uptick in nutrients and the odd color of the plants.

Out of curiosity, he ventured to the pile of compost they had left out in case the squigs started eating again. After days of sitting there unchanged, the organic material had begun to break down again. He stooped down and took a sample of that too before heading back inside.

After dropping the samples off at the lab to be analyzed and pointedly avoiding Elena’s gaze, he headed back to his room to try and sleep. Something was steeping in the back of his mind like a kettle of satcha flower tea, but he knew he was too tired to fit the puzzle pieces together.

Mind still buzzing, he eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep.

At breakfast the next morning, Kyn sat across from him again. “Trouble in paradise?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He took a pointed sip of his Jolt to avoid snapping at her.

The scientist rolled her eyes. “Come on. Until yesterday, you and Elena were attached at the hip, and now you’re barely looking at one another. What happened?”

He sighed. “My love life is none of your business.” Aside from the conversation they’d had the day before, they hadn’t really spoken to one another outside of work-related topics. Why wasshe talking to him about his personal business like they were friends?

“It is if it means you’re too distracted to help fix this. And you both seem to do your best thinking when bouncing ideas off each other.” She took a bite of her granis. “How are we going to do this if you’re in a lovers’ spat with the other smartest person on our team?

Unfortunately, she had a point. When he was working, he kept turning to Elena to ask what she thought only to remember she was not with him. She was his favorite person to go to for brainstorming.

“She’s mad because she thinks I’ve already given up on the project and don’t care about it anymore,” he said, focusing on his food.

“Well, have you?” she asked.

His head snapped up. “Of course not! And I still care. I want this to work, but…”

“But what?”

He sighed. “I understand the prince’s point of view. Why keep throwing everything at a losing strategy? Science may be trial and error, but so far, we’ve been some trial, all error. And we have to think about the bigger picture here.”

“Preventing a famine,” Kyn said.

“Exactly.” He took another sip from his Jolt. “I wish I could just get it through her head that I can’t let people die for the sake of our egos. If we need to change strategy, we should do it before it’s too late.”

“Have you considered…” She stirred her granis, seeming to do it more to buy time to put her thoughts together than to mix the savory porridge. “Maybe this isn’t just about the project?”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

Rolling her eyes, she muttered something like, “Men,”and took a vicious bite of her breakfast. “Okay, let’s think here. How did you and Elena meet?”

“You know how we met.”

“Yeah, but I want you to say it.”

He didn’t appreciate the way she was talking to him. He wasn’t a child, but she was speaking as though she was helping a particularly slow student with his math homework. “Doing this project.”

She pointed her spoon at him. “Exactly. And you bonded through this project. Right?”

He furrowed his brows. “Yes?”

“So, what happens when the project is over?”

Oh.“Oh.”

She smirked. “There we go. I knew we’d get there eventually, sir.”

“So, I fucked up.” He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “What do I do now? I thought I made it clear I was interested in her beyond this project.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, you might have said that, but emotions are funny things, especially if you’ve been hurt before. It can be difficult to believe the next person is telling the truth.”