IV
Cerryl glanced up as he started up the steps from the front foyer of the Halls of the Mages, his eyes going to the full-body stone images on the ledge just below the top of the wall-the images of the great mages, he guessed. He knew the stocky figure that was the second from the far left was Hartor, the High Wizard who had restructured the Guild to oppose Recluce. As if it had done much good.
He paused on the stone landing just outside the White Tower’s first level. Did he hear a set of boots on the stone steps? He stepped into the lower level, where one of the guards he did know, Gostar, was talking to the boy in the red tunic of a messenger who sat on the stool behind the guards, waiting for a summons from one of the higher mages in the tower.
“Doesn’t always take so long, lad.” Gostar’s eyes went to Cerryl. “The mage Cerryl here. He was a student mage for but two years.”
The black-haired boy from the creche looked away from Cerryl.
“It’s true,” Cerryl said. “Sometimes it’s easier if it takes longer, though.” His friend Faltar had taken nearly four years, but Faltar hadn’t had to fight brigands in Fenard and sneak across a hostile land… or deal with Jeslek day in and day out. Cerryl frowned. Faltar also hadn’t gotten a half-score of lancers killed, either.
“You see there, lad. All in the way you look at it,” said Gostar heartily.
The messenger kept his eyes on the white granite floor tiles.
At the sound of boots coming down the tower steps, Cerryl glanced through the archway, and a broad smile filled his face as Leyladin descended the last few steps from the upper levels, wearing her green shirt, tunic, and trousers-even dark green boots. Her blonde hair, with the faintest of red highlights, had been cut shorter and was almost level with her chin.
“How is Myral?” asked Cerryl, not knowing quite what to say.
“Better today.” After a moment of silence, Leyladin offered a smile, somehow both shy and friendly. “Can you come to dinner? Tonight?”
“I’d like that.” Cerryl paused. “If you can wait a bit. I have to meet with Kinowin first. For the first season I do gate duty I have to talk to him after I finish. It shouldn’t take that long.”
A mischievous smile crossed her lips. “Father can wait that long.”
“Your father?” Cerryl’s throat felt thick.
“I’ve talked about you so much that he says he must meet you.”
Lucky me… He could sense a chuckle from Gostar.
“I’ll wait here with Gostar.”
Cerryl nodded. “I hope it won’t be long.” He went to the left, past the guards and the still-mute young messenger.
“Lady mage… true he killed the prefect of Gallos all by himself?”
“It’s said to be true.” Leyladin’s voice drifted after Cerryl.
“He looks… too nice…”
“… a quiet mage…”
Appearances-was one of his problems that he looked like a polite young scrivener and not a mage who would upset the world. They said that the Black mage Creslin had been small. Was that why he’d killed- or had to kill-so many? Cerryl squared his shoulders as he stepped up to the overmage’s door.
At the first thrap on the door, Kinowin replied, “Wait a moment, if you would, Cerryl.”
“Yes, ser.” Cerryl settled onto the bench outside the white oak door. Even if he hadn’t done that much, it had been a long day, a very long day. The gates opened to wagons at sunrise. His eyes closed…
“Cerryl?”
He jerked awake and bolted upright. “Oh… I’m sorry.”
Kinowin laughed once, gently. “That’s all right. Being a gate mage is more tiring than most realize. That’s why we give it to you younger mages. I wouldn’t want to do it.”
As Cerryl followed, still groggy, and closed the heavy door behind him, Kinowin walked to the window and looked out at the dark clouds looming to the east. Even the purple wall hanging seemed gloomy rather than striking.
Cerryl stood by the table, not wanting to sit down.
“Go ahead. Sit down.” Kinowin did not turn from the window. “It’s storming to the east.” After a moment, he turned. “How did your day go?”
“It was quiet. I’ve seen farm wagons and even a stone wagon, but not many other kinds. There are more passengers on the coaches, and they look like factors.”
“That should not surprise you.”
Cerryl couldn’t say he was surprised, but he also could not have said why he was not surprised.
“Do you know how the exchanges work?”
“Not very well. The factors make agreements to buy or sell goods in future seasons, sometimes for things that haven’t even been grown or mined.”
Kinowin stepped toward the table, then leaned forward and put his hands on the back of the chair. “The exchanges help smooth trade. I’d judge that is as good an explanation as any. The factors use the exchange in hopes of making coins or, when times are lean, to avoid losing too many coins. So… when things are unsettled, long before others realize there may be trouble, the factors are buying and selling those future goods. Will there be a famine in Certis or Southwind? The price of wheat corn two seasons from now goes up. The price of cattle goes down.”
“Ah… the price of cattle goes down?”
Kinowin shrugged. “If the fields are brown and bare and grain is dear, the farmers and the holders must sell.”
Cerryl wanted to shake his head. He’d never even considered such matters.
Kinowin flashed a sardonic smile. “To the blade’s edge, Cerryl. To the blade’s edge. The exchanges have been most busy lately. The price of future timber is going up. Do you know why?”
Cerryl looked at the overmage helplessly.
“Ships-it takes timber to build them, and they require the older, heavier oak and the long pole firs.”
Cerryl understood.
“You see? Then tell me what that means.”
“Well… if someone is building ships, but not so many traders are coming to Fairhaven, then they aren’t building trading ships, but warships…”
“Both Recluce and Spidlar are building more ships. I’d say for trade. Others… are building ships because they are losing trade.”
“Are we building ships? In Sligo?”
“Let me just say that I would be most surprised if the High Wizard had not contracted with the Sligan shipwrights for a few more vessels. That is something I would not mention to anyone.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Myral said you worked very hard to master a wide range of skills.” Kinowin looked hard at Cerryl. “In the times we are living in, I would suggest you continue to work hard. Being a gate guard offers some time and opportunities for practice. You might see if you could master the illusion of not appearing where you stand. Although I have some suspicions you know something about that.” Kinowin’s eyes twinkled. “You might see if you could refine your chaos senses even more-see if you can determine by sense alone every item in an incoming wagon. I won’t offer too many suggestions, but any skill you improve will improve others.” The big mage straightened and let go of the chair.
“Yes, ser.”
“I will see you tomorrow.” Kinowin turned back to the window and the still-darkening clouds. A rumble of distant thunder muttered over Fairhaven.
Cerryl closed the door behind him.
“… heard the door. Like as he won’t be long, lady mage. Your words are kind…”
“Just remember…” Leyladin straightened from her conversation with the young messenger.
Gostar was no longer one of the duty guards and had been replaced by a White Guard Cerryl didn’t know, a man with an angular face and a short-trimmed beard.
“Shall we go?” the blonde healer asked. “I’m hungry.”
“So am I.”
Leyladin turned and bestowed a parting smile on the messenger, getting a shy and faint one in return.
“You’ve made another friend.” Cerryl glanced across the entry foyer of the front Hall as they descended the steps side by side.
“Most of them are lonely.”
Cerryl wondered. The children of the mages in the creche had each other. He’d never even really talked to another child near his own age until he’d been apprenticed to Dylert. Erhana had been snobbish, but she’d helped him learn his letters, and without that, he never would have become Tellis’s apprentice-or been accepted into the Guild. Faltar had befriended Cerryl and become his first real friend, when Cerryl had first come to the Halls. That had been before Faltar had been seduced by Anya, but Faltar remained his friend. Friends were too hard to come by.
“You’re quiet.” Leyladin glanced at him. “Your childhood was lonelier, I know, but they’re still lonely.”
Cerryl almost stopped as he stepped off the last riser of the staircase and onto the polished stone floor tiles of the foyer floor but managed not to miss the step.
“That bothered you. Why?”
After a moment, he answered, “I just hadn’t thought of it quite that way.”
“I suppose I’ve had the luxury of being able to look at things without struggling for coins and food.” The blonde shivered as they went down the steps to the walk beside the Avenue. “It’s gotten colder.”
“It has. Faltar said spring was coming.”
In the early evening, darker than usual with the overhanging clouds, the Avenue was near-empty, with a sole rider plodding northward and away from the Wizards’ Square. Cerryl fastened his white leather jacket halfway up as snowflakes drifted past them. He glanced over at Leyladin, wrapped in a dark green woolen cloak. Snowflakes-Cerryl didn’t expect such in spring. Then, it was early spring, and the new leaves had barely budded, while the old leaves had barely begun to turn from gray to green. He could feel the slight headache that came with storms, not so severe as with a driving rainstorm, more like the twinge of a light rain.
“Storms affect you, don’t they?”
“How did you know?”
“You told me, remember?”
Had he? He wasn’t certain he had, but his life had changed so much, and so quickly, he sometimes felt he was just struggling to take in everything-like Kinowin’s continuing lectures on trade and now more insistence on improving his skills.
The two walked quietly through the scattered flakes until they were less than a block from the south side of the Market Square.
“This way.” Leyladin inclined her head to the left.
Another block found them turning north again.
“Here we are.” She gestured.
Leyladin’s house was not on the front row of homes on the Avenue below the Market Square, but in the slightly smaller dwellings one block behind those of Muneat and the more affluent factors. Instead of a dozen real glass windows across the front of the dwelling, there were merely four large arched windows on each side of the ornately carved red oak double doors, but each of the windows held several dozen small diamond-shaped glass panes set in lead. Each window sparkled from the lamps within the house.
The front of the house extended a good fifty cubits from side to side, and deeper than that, Cerryl suspected as Leyladin led him up the granite walk, a walk flanked just by winter-browned grass.
“The gardens are in the back,” Leyladin answered his unspoken question. “Father said they were for us, not to display to passersby.” The blonde mage opened the front door. “Soaris! Father! We’re here.”
She stepped into a bare foyer barely four cubits wide and twice that in length, with smooth stone walls on either side. Cerryl followed and closed the door. On the left wall was mounted a polished wooden beam, with pegs for jackets and cloaks. Against the right wall was a backless golden oak bench. Beside it was a boot scraper. A boot brush leaned against the wall stones.
Cerryl offered the brush to Leyladin, then took it after she finished and brushed his own boots. Then he took off his white jacket and hung it on one of the pegs.
A huge, heavy man wearing a blue overtunic appeared at the back of the narrow foyer. “Lady Leyladin, your father awaits you and your companion in the study.”
“We will be right there, Soaris.”
“Very good, lady.” Soaris bowed again and departed.
Cerryl turned to her. “Lady Leyladin?”
The blonde mage blushed. “Some hold Father… in high regard, since Mother died when I was young and my sisters are gone, I help father by acting as lady of the household, since he has no consort.”
Cerryl shook his head slowly. “I knew that you were well off…”
“Oh?” Leyladin arched her eyebrows. “From your peeking through the glass? I’ll wager you didn’t tell Sterol about that.”
“I did,” Cerryl confessed. “Except I didn’t tell him who I looked at. You felt me. You told me that, remember? You were so strong that I stopped looking. I never dared try again.”
“You were saying…” she said gently.
“Oh…” He shrugged. “I saw the silks and hangings. I thought you were the daughter of a wealthy merchant-but not so high as a lady.” He grinned. “A lady and a mage and a healer. Far above this lowly junior mage.”
“Stop it.” The healer grimaced. “You’re already more powerful than I am or will ever be. Let’s see Father.”
Cerryl followed her through the foyer arch into the main entry hall. The floors were blue-green marble squares, polished so smooth that the four bronze wall lamps and their sconces shed light from both the wall and the floor. The air smelled of trilia and roses-together with another scent, a lighter one. The walls, even the inside walls, were smoothed granite block to waist-level and white plaster above.
Green silks hung from the archway through which Leyladin led Cerryl into a long sitting room, one with two settees upholstered in green velvet and two matching and upholstered wooden armchairs. All were arranged around a long and low table of polished and inlaid woods. The table inlays had been designed to portray the image of a ship under full sail.
Cerryl paused as he studied the table and then the pair of matched cabinets against the wall, cabinets that almost framed the single picture in a silvered frame on the middle of the inside wall. The image was that of a smiling, narrow-faced woman with generous lips and long wavy blonde tresses. She wore a green vest embroidered in gold thread over a loose white silk shirt. The blue eyes seemed to follow Cerryl. He looked at Leyladin. “Your mother?”
She nodded. “That was her favorite outfit, and it’s how I remember her.”
The end of the sitting room held a hearth, with a brass screen before it. In the wall to the left of the hearth was an archway. Leyladin led Cerryl through the arch and then through a door to the right, ignoring the archway on the left. The study was but ten cubits on a side, perhaps five long paces, and three of the walls were paneled in dark-stained red oak. The forth and inside wall contained only shelves, though, but a third held scattered displays of books, the remainder holding decorative items-malachite vases, a curved silver pitcher, a narrow and ancient blade.
A heavy man rose from the desk in the corner, angled so that the heat from coals in the hearth bathed him where he had been sitting. The top of his head was bald and shining, and on each side of his head blond hair half-covered his ears. A wide smile burst from his clean-shaven face, and green eyes, lighter than those of his daughter, smiled with his mouth.
“Father, this is Cerryl. Cerryl, this is my father, Layel.”
“So… you’re one of the young mages?” Layel stepped around the polished dark wood of the desk and offered a polite head bow.
“A very junior mage among many.” Cerryl bowed in return.
“He’s got a sense of place, Daughter! Maybe too modest for the Halls, from all I’ve seen.”
“He is modest.”
“We should be eating. Meridis will be letting me know for days that I let the food suffer.” Layel gestured and then let Leyladin lead the way out of the study and through the archway she and Cerryl had not taken on the way to the study.
“What are we having?” asked the blonde as they entered a small dining hall.
The dining hall was small only comparatively, thought Cerryl. While three places were set at one end, the long white golden table could have easily seated twenty. Each chair around the table was of the white golden oak, and each was upholstered in the dark green velvet. The pale white china sat upon place mats of light green linen, and matching linen napkins were set in holders beside the silver utensils flanking the china. Fluted crystal goblets were set by each plate.
“Your favorite,” answered Layel, “the orange beef with the pearapple noodles.”
Orange beef? Pearapple noodles? Pearapples had been scarce enough in Cerryl’s childhood, and to be savored on those few occasions when Uncle Syodor or Aunt Nail had produced one. Now Cerryl was about to have noodles made from them-as if they were as common as flour!
“I broke out some of the white wine from Linspros.” Layel glanced at his daughter. “I needed some excuse for something that good. Couldn’t very well drink it by myself.”
The trader sat at the head, with Cerryl and Leyladin at each side, facing each other across the end of the table. No sooner had the three seated themselves than a gray-haired woman in the same type of blue overtunic that Soaris was wearing appeared with two large platters of the same fine white china, then scurried out and returned with two more.
Cerryl glanced across the offerings-thin cuts of beef interspersed with thinly sliced oranges and green leaves and covered with an orange glaze; fine white noodles; long green beans with nuts and butter; and dark bread.
Layel served himself the beef and noodles. After he had finished, Leyladin nodded at Cerryl. “Please.”
“Can’t say that, outside of the white, I’d be taking you for a mage.” Layel took the big glass bottle and poured the clear wine into the three crystal goblets one after another.
Wine from glass bottles-another luxury Cerryl had heard about but never seen. “I know. I look more like a scrivener. I was once, an apprentice scrivener.”
“Now that’s something I don’t know much about.” Layel laughed. “Books, you can’t buy ‘em cheap. So I don’t. Means I don’t sell them, either. Don’t have time to read them.” He lifted his goblet. “To friends, daughters, and companions.”
Cerryl followed their example but took only the smallest sip of the wine. Even with that sip, with the hint of bubbliness and the lemon-nut freshness, he could feel that it was far stronger than anything he’d ever tasted and far, far better.
“Ah… better than I remembered,” said Layel.
“It is good.” Leyladin lifted the porcelain platter that held the still-steaming dark bread and offered it to her father. Layel broke off a chunk, and the blonde offered the platter to Cerryl.
Cerryl took a chunk of the warm bread and glanced toward the older factor.
Layel smiled, as if waiting for Cerryl to speak.
“All of this… it’s different from the Halls,” Cerryl said slowly. “We don’t see that much outside… I haven’t anyway, even before I came to Fairhaven.” He paused. “There’s so much I’ve read about, but… Leyladin has told me you’re a trader, and I don’t know much about trading. What do you trade in?”
“Anything that sells, young mage. Anything that sells. You trade in grain, and if the harvest is bad, you lose everything. You trade in copper, and when someone opens or closes a mine, you lose. I trade in what I can buy cheap and sell dear.” Layel refilled the crystal goblet before him and then Leyladin’s. He glanced at Cerryl’s goblet, still three-quarters full. “You haven’t drunk much.”
“With me, a little wine goes a long way, but it’s very good. Very good.”
“Father is not telling you everything. He hoards goods,” Leyladin interjected with a smile, passing the pitcher with the orange glaze in it. “He buys them cheaply this season and sells them dearly the next. He has two large warehouses here and one in Lydiar.”
“You’ll be giving away all my secrets, Daughter.”
“Just the two of you here?” Cerryl asked.
“Now. My brother Wertel has a house in Lydiar. He runs the business for Father there, and my sisters live with their consorts here in Fairhaven. I’m the youngest.” Leyladin grinned. “And the most trouble.”
“How could you say that, Daughter?” Layel shook his head in mock discouragement. “Trouble? You never brought in every stray dog in Fairhaven to heal it? You never had your head nearly split open because you would heal the fractious carriage horse? You never-”
“Father…”
“No… you couldn’t find a nice fellow and give me grandchildren.” The factor turned to Cerryl. “She had to become a healer. She was trying to heal everything-the dogs, the warehouse cat that got kicked by the mule, the watchman’s daughter…”
Leyladin’s face clouded ever so slightly at the last, but the expression passed so quickly Cerryl wasn’t sure he’d seen it.
“Healers are far more scarce than White mages,” Cerryl said brightly, taking a small mouthful of the beans and nuts with the fork that felt unfamiliar, copying Leyladin’s usage. They were so tender he barely had to chew them, and they hadn’t been cooked into mush in a stew pot.
“Would that it were like trade, where what is scarce is dear,” mumbled Layel.
“Father… finish eating…” Leyladin grinned.
“Always on me, you and your mother. Best to enjoy good food.”
“Talking with his mouth full is about his only bad habit,” Leyladin said.
“And you’ve never let me forget it.” Layel turned to Cerryl. “She’ll find any of your ill ways and try to heal you of them. Fair warning I’m providing.”
“Father…” Leyladin blushed.
“Turning the glass is fair for both.”
Cerryl took another sip of the wine, amazed at how good it tasted, uncertain of what he should say.
Layel glanced at Cerryl. “I’ve embarrassed my daughter enough. She may know how you became a mage, but I do not. Perhaps you could shed a word or two about how you came to Fairhaven.”
“I’m afraid that my life is quite common, compared to yours,” Cerryl protested.
“Best we should judge that. A man’s no judge of himself.”
“Well… as Leyladin might have told you, I’m an orphan. Both my parents died when I was so young I remember neither. I was raised by my aunt and uncle…” Cerryl went on to detail his years at the mines, his apprenticeship at Dylert’s mill, and then his work as an apprentice scrivener for Tellis. “… and then, one day, one of the overmages arrived at the shop and summoned me to meet with the High Wizard. He examined me and decided I was suitable to be a student mage. That took two years, and last harvest the Council made me a full mage… a very junior mage. Now I’m one of those who guard the gates to Fairhaven.”
“Good thing, too.” Layel shook his head. “I don’t mind as paying the tariffs and taxes for the roads, but I’d mind more than a hogshead full of manure if the smugglers got off with using the roads and then coming into the city and selling for less than I could.”
“Father… no one sells for less.”
“They could. Aye, they could. Take stuff in Spidlaria and sneak through Axalt or take the old back roads from Tyrhavven, and afore you know it they’d be in the Market Square.”
“Doesn’t everyone pay the taxes?” Cerryl asked.
“No. Even all the mages in the Halls couldn’t find every ferret who turns a good. That’s not the task of the city patrol, either. They keep the peace, not the trade laws. Thank the light, don’t need armsmen to make trade and tariffs work, not in the city, anyway. See… there’s coins in Fairhaven, and the best roads are the White highways, the ones that can take the big wagons.” Layel shrugged. “So traders and exchanges are here. Smaller traders can take carts over the back roads, but most times they can’t carry that much, and the Traders’ Guild makes sure the road gauges are kept.”
“The road gauges?” asked Leyladin.
Cerryl had the feeling she had asked the question for him, but he was grateful. He’d never heard of the road gauges.
“You should remember, Daughter. If a road is more than four cubits wide, it’s a highway, and the ruler must collect tariffs, and only those with the medallions may use it. See, that way, the pony traders have to go on the slow and muddy tracks that wind out of the way. And most times, a trader with fast teams and wagons is a prosperous trader, and the great highways are fast.”
Cerryl nodded. Another fact he’d not known.
“Meridis! What have we for sweets?”
The serving woman reappeared. “Be you ready for sweets, ser?”
“Why’d you think I called?” Layel’s stern expression dissolved into a chuckle.
“Father… you don’t have to put on the stern front for company.”
“Can’t even be master in my own dwelling, not even over sweets.” The trader glanced at Cerryl. “You’ll see… leastwise, much as a mage can that way.”
“Father…”
“Fellow ought to know.” Layel turned to Meridis. “Sweets?”
“I baked a fresh nut and custard pie.”
“Wonderful! It takes company for me to get my favorite.”
“It does not,” suggested Leyladin. “You always tell poor Meridis not to bother because you’d look like a shoat if she fixed it just for you.”
“You see?” asked Layel. “An answer for everything.”
Cerryl nodded, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the banter and byplay.
“Then let’s have it.”
The empty dishes vanished into the next room, a kitchen, Cerryl thought, but he was far from certain about anything, and Meridis returned with three smaller china plates, each filled with a golden-crusted pie.
“Try it,” urged the trader.
“It is good,” added Leyladin. “Rich, but good.”
Everything felt rich to Cerryl, but he took a small bite and then a larger one. Before he fully realized it, his plate was empty.
“See? Your mage friend agrees with me.”
“It was… I’ve never tasted a sweet that good,” Cerryl confessed. “In fact, I’ve never had a dinner so good.”
Layel and Leyladin exchanged glances, and Leyladin added, “I’m so glad you enjoyed it. The Meal Hall isn’t known for good food. Most of the full mages don’t eat there unless they have to for some reason or another.”
“I have noticed that,” Cerryl said dryly. “I’m beginning to see why.” He found himself yawning, perhaps because of the fullness in his stomach, or the warmth of the dining room, or the length of the day. “I’m sorry. It has been a long day.”
“You have to be at the gates when they open for trade?” asked Layel.
“Yes. Otherwise they have to hold wagons until a mage arrives. I’d not want to face Kinowin if I caused that.”
“Neither would I,” said Leyladin with a laugh. “Perhaps… it may be getting late for you.”
“Don’t shoo him out.”
“He has to rise early, Father.”
Cerryl held up a hand. “Your daughter is doubtless correct. I’ve enjoyed the meal and the company… but I do have to be up before the sun.”
Leyladin rose, and Cerryl followed her example, following her back through the house, lamps still burning in unused rooms, throwing shadows on polished and glistening floors.
In the foyer, he eased on his jacket, thinking about the short, but certainly chill, walk back to his cold room, a room that had seemed so luxurious-until he had seen Leyladin’s house.
“What do you think?” asked Leyladin as she stood by the door.
“About what? Your father? He cares a great deal for you.”
“Cerryl. You are as dense as that mule my father mentioned.” A smile followed the words, but one that held concern, and her green eyes, dark in the dim light of the polished bronze lamps, fixed his.
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to think. I could say pleasant things, and I would, to anyone but you. Right now… I’m… overwhelmed. I grew up an orphan in a two-room house. It was clean, but my pallet was on the stone floor, and my uncle felt lucky if he could grub a good piece of malachite and sell it for a silver once every few eight-days. I went to work in a mill not much past my tenth year, and I was lucky to have a pearapple to eat once or twice a year. Those noodles tonight-they were wonderful, but they probably used more pearapples than I’ve eaten in my whole life. I’ve never had good wine from bottles.”
“Cerryl… I know that. I’ve known that from the beginning, but I couldn’t keep pretending that I wasn’t different.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “With you… I don’t want to pretend.”
“That means more than you know.” He offered a smile.
“I think I know that.” She bent forward and brushed his cheek with her lips. “Good night. I’ll see you soon.”
As he walked through the night, through the light gusts of cold wind, through the intermittent snowflakes with the slight headache he’d almost forgotten, his thoughts swirled like the snow. What happened next? Could anything happen? Jeslek, Sterol, and Anya had all cautioned him again consorting with a Black. Yet Leyladin was a healer who was mostly Black, and he was a White mage-perhaps at best a White mage fringing toward gray. He repressed a slight shiver at that. No one liked gray mages, neither the White mages of Fairhaven nor the Black Order mages of Recluce.
He and Leyladin could hold hands… but how much more? Was she worried about that? Was that why she kept a certain distance?
He frowned as he kept walking. Her kiss had been warm, but not order-chaos conflict warm.