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She reached for her coat.

Taly lay on the grass, pipe tucked in one hand, the other resting limp across her stomach. Smoke curled from her lips in slow, steady ribbons.

She didn’t move when footsteps crunched behind her.

“You always did pick the highest ground when you wanted to feel the lowest,” Ivain said dryly.

Taly turned her head just enough to glance at him, eyes half-lidded and glassy. “This is a private pity party, thank you very much.”

He dropped down beside her anyway. “It’s rude to hotbox the garden and not offer to share.”

Her expression flattened. “You’re not going to make me talk about my feelings, are you?”

“I would never,” he said, legs stretched in front of him.

“Right answer.” She passed the pipe.

He accepted it without comment and took a generous, practiced drag.

Taly raised an eyebrow.

He exhaled slow. “What?”

She shook her head. “I just always thought you sprang fully formed from a battlefield with a sword in one hand and a textbook in the other.” She gave him a sideways look. “The mirthroot sort of breaks the illusion.”

Ivain chuckled. “You think I’ve survived this long on clean living? This isn’t my first rooftop.” He took one more pull, exhaled through his nose, and handed the pipe back. “Skye forwarded the last output summary from the Aion Gate. It’s holding steady.”

Taly scooted closer and let her head fall against his thigh. “And the bridging date?”

“Still in Ares,” Ivain said, naming the last month of summer. His fingers drifted through her hair, slow and absent. “I spoke with him on the relay. He and Kato are returning tomorrow with the shift change.”

Taly didn’t say anything, just curled a little tighter. She’d missed the overbearing prick, more than her dignity would allow. “That’s good.”

“He asked about you.”

She exhaled smoke. “And?”

“Andhe shouldn’t have to. You’re bonded. You could speak to him directly if you’d just let yourself get some damn sleep.”

Taly sighed. Her head sank heavier against his leg, and he shifted just enough to make space.

“Why are you ignoring him?” Ivain pressed.

Because something was watching her from inside her own head, and if she opened the bond, it would see him too. But she didn’t say that. If Ivain suspected the grimble had a successor, he’d ban her from scrying faster than she could say,“It’s no big deal.”

She cracked an eye open. “You’re very nosy tonight.”

Ivain grinned, planting one hand in the grass behind him. “I come from a family of meddlers. It’s in the blood. And I just want to know what’s going on between you two. As the unwilling go-between, I believe I’ve earned that much.”

The pipe found her lips again. She inhaled, slow and steady, like the smoke might fill the hollow parts. “You said you weren’t going to make me talk about my feelings.”

A huff. “Fair enough. Can’t blame a man for trying.” He took the pipe when she passed it. “When you two fall out, I swear the whole house drops five degrees. And you’re not even through the first growth cycle. You’ll be leveling cities in your eighties, Shards save us all.”

Fey matured at roughly the same pace as humans—probably an evolutionary necessity to avoid parents murdering their young. Physical development leveled out by thirty. Then things went quiet… until the eighties, when their magic began to settle. That triggered a second hormonal wave that dragged into the first century.

It was a different picture of her eighties than she used to imagine. No rocking chair. No soft blankets and fading into peace.

“It’s hard to imagine being that old,” she said, shifting and pulling her coat tighter.