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He shot me an indignant look before stalking over and taking the mug from my grasp, inhaling the steam for himself.

“…Ah.So, that’s where I put the foxglove elixir.” His disgruntled expression turned sheepish. “Yes, right, no—don’tdrink that. It might lead to a mild case of…erm…death, I’m afraid. And not at all the kind we’ve been planning for.”

I gave him a wry smile as I searched through the cabinets and grabbed a clean mug. “I’ll just make something for myself, thank you,” I said, moving to the sink to wash the mug a few more times…just to be safe.

“Very good, very good,” Orin mumbled, offhandedly, having already carelessly placed the foxglove elixir down and moved on to the next object that grabbed his attention. A book, in this case—one with multiple, colorful slips of paper marking almost all of its pages.

“Judging by your mood, your mission was a success, I take it?” he asked without looking up from the book.

“Of course it was,” I replied, retrieving the container of crimsonlith fruits from my bag and plopping it onto the kitchen table.

He glanced up. His flicker of interest became a fixed stare, his eyes widening, mouth falling open. Clearly astonished—and now it was myturn to fixhimwith an indignant look.

“Youreallydidn’t think I was going to manage this heist, did you?” I pouted. “You should know better than to doubt my skills by now.”

“I plead senility, once again.” He chuckled, tossing the book aside and moving to the table. “But Nova...this is well done. Well done, indeed!”

I gave a little bow before returning to my cup.

While he inspected the fruits of my labor, I mixed up my usual comfort drink of piping hot black tea with sprinklings of cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, and a dash of vanilla. The same drink my mother used to make me most mornings—though I rarely managed the perfect balance of bitter and sweet she always had.

This morning, in my exhausted state, I accidentally dumped enough sugar in it to render the damn thing nearly undrinkable.

I swallowed it down, all the same. The warmth felt good sinking into my bones, even if the sugar made my stomach twinge.

Orin had placed the crimsonlith blooms carefully in a row on the kitchen counter—after shoving away the mess that had already occupied said counter—and now he was sweeping around the room, plucking different containers from the shelves along the walls; mumbling to himself as he measured this and that; nodding as he lined up more ingredients.

I watched him, silently sipping my tea. After a few minutes, his collecting ceased. His soft lavender eyes fixed again on the blooms I’d gathered. He let out a low sigh, like a man who had traveled around the world and finally laid eyes on his destination. “The last piece.Finally.”

A weight settled over the room, but neither of us acknowledged it with more than a meaningful look at the other; that was all we needed. We’d both already made peace with what came next.

Or as much peace as we were going to make with it, anyway.

“I’ll prepare it all from here,” he said, quieter, his eyes still on the blooms. “Then it will need a few hours to properly settle into a usable spell, and a few more after that to infuse it into a new piece of jewelry for you. What say you get some sleep in the meantime?”

I agreed, draining the rest of my drink before climbing to the loft where my bed awaited me in the same cozy, hastily half-made state I’d left it in.

I kicked off my boots and flopped onto the lumpy mattress without bothering to change, or to fully disarm myself, or to even pull the privacy curtains closed.

I’d planned to at leastattemptrest, but I ended up sitting cross-legged on the mattress, instead, staring at the shelf directly in front of me. It held the few objects I’d dared to collectfrom Rose Point over the years: a violin that had belonged to my mother; a journal of my father’s; an assortment of Phantom’s toys, which had gone untouched since his death and the loss of his solid body.

From the shelf, my gaze lifted to the spiraling swaths of gold-flecked paint across the low ceiling. The paint had been added to cover the deep grooves crisscrossing that ceiling; gashes left behind by my magic after a particularly bad nightmare summoned it and sent it lashing violently out of control.

Six years had passed since that incident—the last time my shadows had clearly appeared on my skin.

Orin hadn’t flinched when I’d woken him in the middle of the night, sobbing over the destruction those shadows had caused. And he hadn’t immediately kicked me out, or threatened to lock me away in some ‘safer’ prison, or done any of the other awful things I’d feared he would.

He’d simply made a new bed for me on the couch, left me there with a cup of chamomile tea, and set to work purifying the magic-wrecked space with various herbs and enchantments. The following morning, I’d woken up to the sound of him humming as he covered the deepest grooves with paint.

The shimmering spirals had faded only slightly after all these years. They still reminded me of theZephyra—the lights sometimes seen dancing in the southern parts of the Valorian sky on cold winter nights.

I crawled to the edge of my bed, peering sleepily down through the loft’s floorboards. There was a decent-sized notch in the board just to the right of the bed, which I sometimes used to spy on Orin and the occasional interesting company he invited into our chaos.

He remained alone today, however. The door stayed barricaded, and he’d even closed the blinds, something that he—a lover of natural light—rarely did.

He was moving recklessly fast, now, fully caught up in the fervor of spell-making. I winced as he upended a bowl of what appeared to be beef stew; likely his dinner from last night, entirely forgotten about. He simply let it be, oblivious to the thick broth oozing across the table as all his focus zeroed in on some sort of smoking powder he was leveling off in a teaspoon.

I blinked, trying to clear the sleep from my eyes as I swept my gaze around the rest of the space, studying it.