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I twist around. “Mind if I join? The view down there is terrible.”

His aklo moves to intercept, but Quin stops him again. He pauses, looking at me. “Wouldn’t that make us seem friendly? Wouldn’t that mean you’d have ‘a lot to explain’?”

“Ah.” Quin snaps his way up the staircase and I chase after him, flashing a grin. “We might not be particularly fond of one another, but we’re both mannered men. We can be civil.”

Quin’s brow arches slightly, politeness barely masking his dismissal as he continues up the stairs.

“Worried my perspectives might prove sharper than your own?” I say, following.

He stops abruptly, forcing me to halt. His gaze locks onto mine. “If your mind was half as sharp as your tongue, I might be.”

He continues and I chase after him, laughing, until he finally relents. Guards part for us; Quin’s aklo stations himself outside the curtains leading to a small balcony. There’s a bench, but the view is better standing at the curved balustrade.

I eye him, noting how he’s favouring his leg. “I’m curious—”

“Remain curious,” he interrupts, tone clipped as he leans harder against the balustrade.

His grip on the railing tightens, just enough to betray the pain he’s trying to mask.

I step closer, lowering my voice. “I’m a healer. Let me...”

He turns his dark unreadable gaze on me. “Stop meddling.”

“But Quin, that’s what I’m good at.” I grin.

He exhales sharply, but there’s a soft edge to it. “If I let you read my pulse, will you stop pestering me?”

“Probably not.”

Exasperation wars with amusement. “Then there’s no point.”

“Except for feeling better.”

He laughs bitterly.

I know when to back off—I give up a step and gesture to the stage below, read from the scroll hanging above it. “Lovelights are the highest joy of the people.”

Someone in the lower crowd calls out, “Too easy. Of course they are. Why else is the lovelight festival our national holiday?”

The lovelight festival. The mark of mid-winter, and the most beautiful and heart-wrenching time of the year. Young lovers skate over canals and kiss on bridges, and the city twinkles with love—innocent, pure, unreciprocated, forbidden. Light blazes brilliantly from the heart and dances around the loved one before settling deep into their chest.

Beautiful, witnessing hearts and minds that have acknowledged their true love. Heartbreaking, when those lovers are not gifted lights in return.

“Pay attention, now,” Quin says. “The young man ascending the stage is a keen mind. His focus is on healing, like you.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s the son of Apex-vitalian Chiron. Florentius.”

“Chiron? The Chiron who was made Apex before he reached thirty?” I straighten. I’ve read all the compilations he’s authored.

Quin looks at me. “He’ll place first in the next examinations.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m rarely wrong about people.” A fleeting expression I can’t quite identify... Dismay? Hope? Cynicism. How many people he must have met, to be so jaded so young.

I shuffle closer, staring down at the elegant young man onstage. “How well do you know Vitalian Chiron?” He’s one of fewer than a dozen to receive the sixth stamp on his soldad. The highest order of magic. Only one person in history ever advanced their magical ability further, and Vitalian Chiron had been the apprentice of that Apex himself. “What I wouldn’t do to learn from him,” I say wistfully, wondering if this is the feeling Skriniaris Evander sent me here to find.