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When the road came to Egren, it arrived with so little fuss that the residents of the duchy had begun to doubt Adrien Augustine’s involvement.

It had been a full year since the prince of Telrus had completed the first part of the Augustine Road at a truly astounding clip.

Much of the sparkle had faded from it by the time it made its way to the eastern duchies—partly because it was no longer combined with a victory march for the prince’s troops and partly because it had taken so damn long to get there in the first place.

A full year, the townsfolk grumbled. Took him two months and change to cover the west, but when it comes to us, I suppose the prince thinks he can take his sweet time.

Instead, the road marched along at a downright languorous pace, led by surveyors who laid out markers that were sketched in by the crews of laborers shoveling out the tracts. The grunts of the workers and the skitch of their shovels into the dirt was the only fanfare that announced its approach.

It was one of those late summer mornings where the sun poured through the bedroom window of their little apartment and made it downright criminal to do anything but enjoy the way it pooled on the sheets and burned off the chill of a night that was edging dangerously close to the first frost of the year.

If shovels were skitch ing at this hour, they did so quietly and politely.

Kat had once dreamed of mornings like this. She’d never grow tired of waking up whenever she damn well pleased, without the peal of a horn or the shriek of Mira’s whistle to command her.

And that wasn’t even starting on the wonder that was waking up next to Emory.

He’d never struck her as a heavy sleeper when they were on the campaign together, but she’d soon discovered that he was simply that good at following orders—and that without anyone breathing down his neck, he’d laze about well past noon if the day allowed.

It gave Kat ample time to take in the view every time she woke first. She’d let her nails skim over the broad slope of his shoulders, the swell of his waist, the places where he’d gone soft over a year without drilling and the places where he hadn’t—mainly his arms and back, which he still put to good use almost every day.

The sheets pooled around his waist where he’d tossed them off at some point in the night, and she’d let that hand wander lower, teasing over his hipbone, tracing the edge of the heat that radiated from him until she saw a smile start to tense the corner of his lips.

That was usually the point at which she stopped caring if she woke himup.

They could happily pass the whole morning in bed if Miss Ophelia had given them the day, but more often than not, duty called—not with horns and whistles, but with shouts and yells and the thump of small feet on the stairs outside.

Today was technically supposed to be one of their indulgent off mornings, but Kat knew simply from the amount of excitement already filtering through their window from the courtyard outside that there would be very little rest to be had.

Not on the day the road was coming to town.

The kids had been worked up about it for a week, and Emory had led a few of the older ones out on an expedition to watch the survey team at work.

The younger ones fed off that excitement, even if they didn’t understand the economic implications of having a solid piece of infrastructure connecting Egren to the rest of the continent.

None were more excited than Kat. Less than an hour after waking—a record, on a day where she had leeway to take the entire morning off—she was thundering down the steps and sweeping into the kitchen, where Miss Ophelia was running breakfast with a level of skill and efficiency that would have swept Mira Morgenstern off her feet.

“There she is,” the old woman crowed, shoving a plate in her hands. “Big day today, isn’t it?”

“Depends,” Kat replied, ducking to the side as the twin boys Amos and Vicks rocketed past her and up the stairs.

“Hey, careful!” she called after them, as if she hadn’t very deliberately left the door to their rooms unlocked for exactly this reason.

Half a second later, Emory’s wordless shout of surprise confirmed the hunters had found their prey.

“What do you mean depends ?” Ophelia asked, doling out another serving into an eagerly proffered bowl.

“Kat doesn’t think he’s going to show up,” Marcy interjected helpfully from the breakfast table.

“Let’s pray he doesn’t if you’re talking with your mouth full like that,” Kat replied, wedging in next to her on the bench.

Marcy stuck out a porridge-laden tongue.

Kat mirrored it. She was still getting used to the rhythms of the orphanage, even a year in.

As an only child, her experience with kids was limited, though her experience as the hinge of a rowdy decade was plenty applicable on some days.

On others, she clung to the advice her father sent in his letters—and made sure the expertly honed kitchen knives he’d also mailed stayed far away from tiny fingers.

She lacked Emory’s natural ease, but with older kids like Marcy, she felt like she was getting close.

At twelve, Marcy was starting to come into a sharp wit that made her a terror and a delight in equal measure.

“Of course he’s going to show up,” Miss Ophelia tutted. “He wrote that he was. And you’ve seen the progress on the road. Barring the Mouth of Hell opening for a second time”—the old woman flicked her fingers toward the Seal in a superstitious gesture—“he has no other excuse.”

“Oh, I’m sure he could come up with something,” Kat muttered.

“Coming through!” Emory called, shouldering into the kitchen with one squirming, squealing boy under each arm. “Caught some pests. Gonna put ’em out in the yard for you if you don’t mind.”

“Noooo,” wailed Amos from under his right arm.

Vicks echoed the sentiment. Both of them made gagging noises as Emory leaned in to plant a kiss on Miss Ophelia’s cheek that worsened when he crossed to the breakfast table and dropped one on top of Kat’s head.

She gave him a playful smack on the side—no lower, though she was tempted—and he continued past the breakfast table and out through the side door into the yard.

No fewer than three kids excused themselves and shot off in his wake.

Miss Ophelia shook her head ruefully, peering out the kitchen window. “One of these days, that man is going to sit down and enjoy a hot meal I prepared all the way through, and not a single person is going to disturb his peace. I just hope I live to see it.”

“If he wanted to sit down and eat a hot meal all the way through, no power in the material plane could stop him,” Kat countered.

No higher order could interrupt the perfect little life they’d built for themselves—and it wasn’t just the two of them, if the letters that trickled into the orphanage’s postbox were anything to goby.

Carrick and Sawyer wrote often from their new home in Brista, bragging about the joys of married life and asking none too subtly when Kat and Emory were going to give their sweet little ceremony a run for its money.

Javi had found work in a bookshop he’d scouted out in Palomar, free to hunt down heretical theories to his heart’s delight and debate them viciously in a correspondence he’d struck up with Gage, who’d veered in the opposite direction and dedicated themself to the priesthood.

Brandt had taken up the duties of the first decade’s hinge spear, boasting of the rebuilding effort he was leading under Mira’s command in the far reaches of Kaston.

Also in Kaston—and writing, curiously, from the same address—were Elise and Ziva.

It wasn’t clear if the kitchen girl was still in the picture.

All of them were finally free to pursue their own destinies without the weight of duty binding them, without royalty, demons, or the hosts themselves upending the course of their lives.

It was at the precise moment that gratitude settled that the knock on the door came.

“Told you,” Miss Ophelia said. “Ask him if he wants breakfast,” she called after Kat, who was already halfway down the hall.

“Back, back, you fiends,” Kat grunted, wrestling her way through the overexcited pack of kids who had rushed in to fight for a chance to peer through the keyhole.

Half of them were too little to open the front door themselves, and the other half lacked the temerity.

It was on her to slide back the bolt, pull hard on the handle, and swing it open.

On the other side, Adrien Augustine waited, a coach flanked by a veritable half-century at his back and a sheepish grin plastered across his face that got more and more strained with every new child who peered around the doorjamb. “Katrien!” he cried.

“Your Highness,” she replied coolly. “You’re on time.”

“Why, of course I’m on time. I wouldn’t miss out on a single second of our reunion—especially not with the way they’ve got me scheduled for this provincial visit.

Daya’s been an absolute nightmare, as you can imagine.

Accusing a woman of sedition has the most peculiar consequences.

I’ve never once known the Lady Imonde to keep a schedule apart from when it’s horribly inconvenient to me. ”

“So what I’m hearing is there’s no time for breakfast,” Kat said with a smirk.

“I believe to say otherwise would be heresy in your book,” the prince replied. “However, I’m not sure I can stick around to see the fruits of my labor fulfilled.”

With a flourish, he produced a woven basket from behind his back, absolutely overflowing with rich, red strawberries.

Kat took it by the handle he proffered and did her damnedest to make sure that it looked smooth.

No one in his retinue would suspect there was anything but fresh-picked berries in the basket, though it easily weighed thrice what it should have.

It had been unusually easy to guilt Adrien when push came to shove.

He felt badly about the whole retracted proposal thing, for starters, and even though he was by all reports absolutely enchanted with Giselle Koros, who had become his fiancée within weeks of their introduction and would officialize her role as future queen of Telrus before the year was out, his rebellious streak was still alive and well.

It left him remarkably suggestible when Kat wrote with her proposition.

The hardest part had been convincing him of the delivery method, but Kat had made her orders clear.

It was late in the summer, and the fields were still abundant.

Adrien wouldn’t come to her as a cleanhanded benefactor, dropping off his donation like a dress at the tailor’s.

If he wanted to do this, he had to get his hands dirty.

And he had. Kat would have no grand say in the future of the realm, but she could have a small one.

One she cultivated and shaped right here at Ophelia’s orphanage, one that went hand in hand with a future spent eating her way through that illegible list Emory kept in his pocket, which had only gotten longer over the past year.

It felt like true alignment. Clarity of purpose, paired with unwavering intention.

The Augustine coffers had so many Aurean tokens sitting in reserve, wasting away uncultivated, and Egren had so many orphaned children who needed not only an open door but a steady hand to forge their potential when they walked throughit.

Already Kat was thinking of Marcy, and which of the angels’ blessings she might taketo.

The weight of the gold in Kat’s hands was the promise of a long road ahead. But first there would be strawberries, and if Miss Ophelia could be convinced, a pie, and one more item checked off on a list long enough to last a lifetime.