LOGINPart TwoKael's POVHe found her in the great hall at the end of the evening.He had been looking for her for twenty minutes. He had checked the library first because the library was where she went when something was interesting enough to pursue past dinner. He had checked the planning hall because of Fenn's new route maps. He had checked the corridor outside her mother's room because they often talked in the evenings now, long quiet conversations he did not intrude on.She was in none of those places.She was in the great hall.He stopped in the doorway.He stayed there.She didn't see him.She was at the far end of the long table with Pip beside her and one of his illustrated presentations between them. She was looking at it with her full attention and Pip was explaining something with the hand gestures that came out when he was confident in his argument which was most of the time.She asked a question.Pip answered it with the expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly
Part OneSeraphina's POVShe had moved his papers again.Not all of them. Just the ones on the left side of the desk that had been accumulating in the specific way of someone who dealt with things by placing them in a pile and intending to deal with them later and then placing more things on top of the intention. She had gone through the pile, sorted it into three categories of urgency, filed the bottom half in the correct archive sections and left the top half in a new arrangement that made actual sense.She was very pleased with this.She was aware he was not going to be pleased with this.She was also aware that not being pleased with it would not change the fact that it was objectively better and he would recognise this within approximately four minutes of sitting down and would say nothing about it which was its own kind of acknowledgement.She sat in her chair on her side of the desk and opened her own work and settled in with the specific satisfaction of a woman who had spent e
Kael's POVShe had stolen his coat again.He noticed it the moment he came back from the morning briefing with Rael. The coat had been on the back of his chair when he left. It was not on the back of his chair now. He looked at the chair. He looked at the empty hook by the door. He looked at the window seat where she was sitting with her book and his coat around her shoulders and her feet tucked under her with the comfortable ownership of someone who had decided that the window seat was hers and the coat was hers and most of the study was hers and was simply waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.He sat down at his desk.He said nothing.He picked up his papers.He was aware of her the way he was always aware of her, the specific quality of it, constant and present in the way that breathing was present, something that had become so fundamental to the texture of his days that its absence was the thing he would notice.He had thought about that once.The absence.He had been in t
Seraphina's POV
Seraphina's POV
Seraphina's POV







