Chapter 32: The Reasonable One Has Feelings About This

Cax's POV

I knew before Ryker walked into the morning briefing.

The bond told me, that slight shift in its quality, the way it felt different after something significant changed between two people, warmer in a direction that hadn't been warm before, more settled, like a room after a fire has been burning in it for hours and the walls have absorbed the heat.

I noticed it at six in the morning while reviewing border reports and said nothing to anyone.

Ryker came in at seven forty three, which was late for him, and sat down across from me and Zephyr and poured coffee with the specific controlled calm of a man who was being very deliberate about how he occupied space this morning, and I looked at him for exactly two seconds before looking back at my documents.

Zephyr was already looking out the window with an expression I couldn't read, which meant he knew too, which meant this was something we were all going to sit with quietly for a while before anyone said anything out loud.

"Border report," Ryker said, as if that was what we were all here to discuss.

"Northern perimeter is clear," I said, "Daren confirmed the last of Ryder's delegation cleared the outer territory checkpoint at dawn."

"Good." He picked up his coffee. "And the informant."

"Still working on it." I turned a page. "I have three candidates based on access points and timing, I'm narrowing it down today."

"How long."

"By tonight if I'm efficient." I looked up at him briefly. "I'll be efficient."

He nodded and we went through the rest of the briefing with complete professionalism and nobody said anything that wasn't directly relevant to security or policy and by the time it was done I had a headache forming behind my left eye that had nothing to do with the border reports.

I went for a run.

The palace grounds had a perimeter path that covered approximately two miles if you took all the outer loops, and I ran it once and then turned around and ran it again, and the morning air was cold enough to make my lungs work hard and my legs burn properly, and by the time I came back inside I was physically exhausted and my head was entirely clear.

I was fine.

I showered, changed, and went to the council meeting that had been scheduled for three days and could not be moved without causing exactly the kind of diplomatic noise I didn't need this week.

The council chamber had six members besides myself, all of them experienced enough that they required actual engagement rather than the performance of it, so I engaged and I was sharp and I walked them through the trade renegotiation and the border security update and the revised staffing protocols with the focused competence of someone who had been doing this job for eleven years and was good at it on his worst days.

Elder Councilman Pratt asked three pointed questions about the delegation visit and I answered all of them cleanly, no hesitation, nothing that would register as evasion to someone paying close attention.

I was the picture of composure.

Then the door to the corridor outside opened and closed in the way doors did when staff moved through the passage, a brief sound that wouldn't have registered to anyone in the room except me, and I caught the edge of the bond shifting in a direction that meant she was nearby and every thought I had been having disappeared simultaneously and completely.

Pratt was still talking.

I looked at him and produced the correct expression and heard approximately forty percent of what he said, which was enough to nod at the right moments while the bond pulled quietly in the direction of the corridor and I kept my hands flat on the table and my attention directed forward by sheer force of eleven years of practice.

She walked past the gap in the door, just a second of movement visible through the narrow opening, dark clothes and that particular way she carried her shoulders when she thought no one was looking, and then she was gone, and the council chamber settled back into its ordinary dimensions, and Pratt finished whatever he was saying.

"Agreed," I said, which appeared to be the correct response because he moved on without questioning it.

I was fine.

The meeting ended forty minutes later and I walked out into the corridor and stood there for a moment, breathing the cooler air, watching the other council members disperse in their various directions.

Zephyr appeared beside me the way he sometimes did, quietly and without announcing himself, and fell into step as I started walking and said nothing for a moment, which with Zephyr meant he was deciding how to open something rather than deciding whether to open it at all.

"You know," he said.

"Yes," I said.

We walked another few steps.

"Are you going to do anything about it?" he asked.

I considered this seriously, the way I considered everything that mattered, not the first answer but the right one, the one that was true rather than just convenient or immediate.

"I'm going to find out who Ryder's informant is," I said, "and then I'm going to take Ava to the east garden and tell her," I stopped.

Zephyr looked at me sideways.

The corridor was quiet around us, staff moving at the far end, a guard at the junction checking his rotation, everything ordinary and in its place.

"Tell her what?" Zephyr said, one eyebrow moving slightly upward.

I looked toward the far corridor where the bond was pulling gently, where she had disappeared twenty minutes ago with her mop and her gray cloth and that way she had of working with her whole body focused forward like if she just kept moving fast enough the world wouldn't catch her.

My jaw tightened, just slightly.

"That she doesn't have to keep running."