Anabeth wouldn’t speak.

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She sat very straight, hands folded in her lap with almost aggressive precision. Her ears were still pink, and every time her gaze drifted even vaguely in my direction, she found something urgently fascinating out in the horizon.

  I understood how she felt. If I were her, after what’d just happened earlier, I’d just refuse to regain consciousness altogether. But she was starving, and I was responsible for her well-being.

  “You still have not gathered the herbs,” I rumbled. I’d thought that sufficient, but Ceralis apparently deemed herb-gathering to be a far more demanding task, and added, “Without the herbs, the stew lacks balance. Without balance, the meal dissatisfies. A dissatisfying meal erodes morale. Low morale disrupts rest. Poor rest delays recovery. Delayed recovery weakens the body. Weak bodies hesitate. Hesitation gets people wounded. Wounded people die.”

  “... from soup?”

  “From failure, as history has very clearly demonstrated.”

  “…Ah.”

  “I would advise haste.”

  “I shall go at once!” Then she flew off into the horizon. I sighed.

  Anabeth returned far sooner than expected.

  She emerged from the brush with purposeful steps, robe hastily retied, and with none of her earlier grogginess. In one arm, she carried a bundled assortment of greens, stems bound together with a twist of grass. They smelled clean, earthy, and useful.

  She’d gathered wild garlic leaves, thyme, and a sprig of rosemary taken from a wind-bent shrub that clung to the higher ground. Mixed among them were a few less familiar additions: duskleaf fennel, with its faint anise bite; silvervein yarrow, prized more for its resilience than its flavor; and a handful of crushed emberroot tips, a local plant whose warmth lingered on the tongue long after cooking.

  All of it was sensible.

  She dropped the bundle beside the fire. “I prioritized balance,” she said.

  It sounded rehearsed. Whatever spiral she’d fled with, she had clearly left it somewhere in the grass. Her breathing was even now, and I suspected she had given herself a brisk lecture on the virtues of usefulness, on how work solved more problems than apologies ever could.

  I inspected the haul, then inclined my head. The stew would thrive.

  Apparently, once properly motivated, Anabeth was terrifyingly efficient.

  I started with the meat.

  The best cuts went first: the dense, worked muscle from the shoulder and neck. Tender cuts cooked quickly and forgave mistakes, but they had no patience for a long simmer; leave them in a pot for hours and they surrendered all structure, turning stringy and sad.

  These, though, wanted time. Heat and moisture would break them down slowly, turning toughness into richness.

  I trimmed away excess sinew, then cut the meat into even chunks, large enough to hold together through hours of cooking but small enough to yield without a fight. Waste was minimal; scraps and bones were set aside for stock. Nothing was thrown away that could still be persuaded to contribute.

  Not all of it went into the pot, however. I left a handful of flank and rib cuts with enough fat to behave over open flame. These would cook quickly, crisp on the outside while staying mercifully tender within. Something to eat while the real work took its time.

  Anabeth had already taken care of the fire, and I hadn’t even asked.

  By the time I turned back from the chopping block, a neat bed of coals was forming, the flames steady and controlled. She crouched beside it, dusting her hands together as a pair of freshly struck flintstones cooled near her knee like they’d always been there.

  “Did you carry those with you?” I asked.

  She glanced up. “Why would I need to?”

  Before I could respond, she murmured something under her breath, and a flintstone formed in her palm, rough-edged and already warm. She didn’t even look at them as she brought her hands together. The stones struck once, and sparks leapt. Where they landed, the tinder caught immediately, a small, obedient flame curling up as if eager to please.

  Anabeth glanced back at me with a sheepish grin. “See?”

  She let the stones crumble into grit and dust that sifted through her fingers, already forgotten.

  I returned to the meat. Some demonstrations didn’t require comment. Point made: life was considerably easier when one could simply decide to have fire.

  I threaded the meat onto skewers cut from green wood, spacing the chunks so heat could reach every side. Fatty edges went toward the ends, leaner pieces closer to the center. A pinch of salt first (one always needed to bring salt with them for curing meat), pressed in by hand so it had time to disappear into the flesh instead of sitting uselessly on the surface.

  I bruised a few garlic leaves and rubbed them lightly over the meat, not enough to dominate, just enough to announce themselves. A dusting of crushed emberroot followed, then thyme stripped from the stem and scattered sparingly.

  I laid the skewers across the fire where the flames had burned down to glowing wood and steady embers, close enough to sear without letting the fire run wild. Fat dripped as I lifted and turned the meat, listening rather than watching, waiting for the sizzle to deepen before rotating it again.

  Behind me, Anabeth watched for a moment in silence. Then she moved closer to the fire, propped one elbow on her knee, and rested her chin in both hands, watching me with a rather abashed interest.

  “You’re actually very good with food, Sir,” she said, sounding mildly surprised. “Is there anything you cannot do besides taking off your helm?”

  I shrugged. ‘A man has to feed himself.’

  Ceralis, apparently, disagreed with that framing.

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  The words came out lower than I’d intended, weighted with something that wasn’t strictly mine. “A man who cannot feed himself becomes dependent. Dependency invites weakness. Weakness invites exploitation.”

  “You are… uh… you are very romantic when you say things, Sir,” she said.

  I glanced back at her.

  She immediately found something fascinating in the fire.

  “I meant,” she added, too quickly, “that you phrase things very firmly. It just sounds… more intentional than people expect.”

  I attempted to shut her up before she could embarrass herself. “Practicality does not equate romance.”

  “No. Of course not.” She nodded, then nodded again, as if agreeing with herself. “Still, practical men do tend to live longer. Which is… objectively preferable.”

  That was not a metric I’d prepared for.

  The fire crackled. I turned the skewers again, resolutely focused on not acknowledging the way her gaze lingered like it was evaluating a future.

  Ceralis, mercifully, said nothing.

  I slid one skewer free once the surface had browned properly, the fat crisped just short of burning. I tested it against the edge of my knife then handed it back to her without ceremony.

  “Eat,” I said. “While it still respects itself.”

  She accepted it with both hands and blew on it once before taking a bite. “Oh,” she said at last. “Oh, that’s… saints above. If you weren’t so catastrophically overqualified for violence, you’d make a terrifying royal chef.” Her voice grew small. “Too bad you are my personal chef for an undisclosed amount of time.”

  This was unsettling. Anabeth was so unflappable, so watching her fumble now felt less flattering than disorienting, like discovering a familiar tool behaving unpredictably in the hand.

  I returned to the pot, stirring the stew. The tougher cuts had begun to relax, the broth clouding just enough to promise substance later. It would need time yet.

  “You know,” she said, turning the skewer in her fingers, “most men get very strange about food once they realize someone else can cook for them. Either they puff up and pretend they don’t need it, or they hover like anxious cats. You’re doing neither.”

  “The Saint’s champion is always busy,” I said.

  “Mmm. See? Third category.” She leaned closer to the fire, and therefore closer to me. She watched me stir for a moment longer, then reached out and plucked a piece of meat free from the skewer with her fingers. She blew on it once, twice, then held it up near my mouth.

  “Cease your tampering,” I warned, “Or I will have that hand removed.”

  “Oh, I apologize,” she said, but made no attempt to retreat.

  I considered refusing.

  That would have required explaining myself.

  I leaned forward and took the bite.

  She smiled.

  “Oh good,” she chirped. “I was hoping you wouldn’t make this into a thing. You do that sometimes. Make things into very serious things that could have remained perfectly pleasant.”

  I chewed. The meat was good.

  She took that as encouragement. “Oh! Speaking of pleasant things, the emberroot you used is particularly nice this time of year. You can tell by the warmth—it lingers instead of biting. That usually means it’s been growing somewhere with a strong residual heat signature. Ones around the volcanic vents tasted the best.”

  There she went again, going off-tangent for no reason whatsoever. I reckoned this woman could talk to herself for hours and laughed at her own jokes when nobody else was present.

  At least she was returning to normal.

  “You know what would also be lovely in this?” she said. “Blackwort. Just a shaving, though. Too much and it turns bitter.” She sighed, a little mournful. “I had some once, but it never keeps. It wilts the moment you take it out of the soil. Very dramatic herb.”

  Blackwort did not grow in this region.

  “And oh—ghost thyme,” she added. “That one looks normal until you bruise it. Then it smells like rain and iron. Very grounding. I almost grabbed some today out of habit, but I restrained myself. It would’ve overpowered the garlic.”

  Those herbs did not grow near farms. They grew near Grave-class dungeons. I knew because I had learned the signs the hard way: blackwort meant turn around, and ghost thyme meant the dead had learned to keep house.

  She tilted her head, watching my expression with mild curiosity. “Oh. Right. That look.”

  I did not ask what look.

  She continued anyway. “I collect samples,” she said lightly, as if admitting to pressed flowers. “Mostly for summoning work. Particularly the lost arts. Do be assured, Ser—none of them require human sacrifice. I find that terribly inefficient.”

  That was not reassuring in the way she seemed to think it was.

  She crouched and reached into her satchel, rummaging past what sounded like far too many hard objects. Then she upended it.

  Books spilled out onto the ground in an untidy cascade. No two bindings matched. None of the titles were familiar in the way legitimate books were familiar.

  I read them anyway.

  On Sympathetic Thresholds in Absent Circles

  Treatise on Conditional Summons and Partial Manifestation

  Threshold Logistics for Non-Corporeal Assets

  Residual Will in Vacated Flesh

  Every single one of them was dark-adjacent at best. Summoning manuals, invocation treatises, treatises that pretended not to be summoning manuals. All of them rare. Several of them dangerous. And at least half looked stolen.

  Why was she showing me this now?

  She picked one up and held it out to me, beaming. “See this? Simply knowing its existence could get you into trouble!” She hugged it to her chest, pleased as a cat that had knocked something valuable off a shelf. “Which means we’re both in trouble now.”

  I stared at her. Her smile widened.

  Great.

  She waved the book once, then tucked it back under her arm. “Oh—before you start imagining cloaked inquisitors kicking down bushes, my family is not chasing me because of these. Nobody important knows I have them,” she said. “Nobody unimportant either. I’m very careful. You’ll notice none of them are catalogued, stamped, or screaming. My family wants me home for an entirely separate matter altogether.” She cinched the satchel closed and slung it over her shoulder. “Now that is settled, I believe I owe you an apology.”

  I stopped stirring.

  That alone was enough to register as a minor event.

  She drew a breath. “Earlier, when I speculated… I overreached.”

  I stared at the stew for longer than acceptable.

  Claire had never apologized. Not once. She had also never speculated aloud, never pushed, never circled a thing until it bled. She had simply assumed, and acted accordingly. Different failures. Quieter ones.

  “I… I didn’t mean any of them. I mean, I did, but not in that tone.” She eyed me. “But… we are something, right?” She gestured between us. “This is something. Are we something?”

  “The Saints find you a companiable companion,” I said.

  Anabeth looked at me for a few seconds from the corner of her eyes. “There’s no point hiding it,” she continued briskly. “I’m the eldest of the von Silberthal family. We are the oldest surviving lineage of Strata Thaumaturgy in the region, and we deal in proper contracts! Yes, we deal in proper contracts. We are a respected house. My father is a devoted follower of the Saints of Yashin. So, uh, none of that blood-soaked nonsense people like to whisper about.” She sniffed. “Very legal. Painfully so. As of this moment,” she went on, “you are not in any legal danger by traveling with me. I cover my tracks extremely well.”

  Something told me this version of her truth had been polished for transport, but I appreciated it anyway. She’d revealed more about herself than I had about mine.

  She seemed pleased with herself anyway. She watched me from beneath her lashes, then leaned closer, rested her elbow lightly against my knee, and tilted her head to peer up at me. “Honesty is the basis of every intimate partnership, don’t you think, Sir Henry?”

  I gulped.

  She grinned. “I’ve told you my background. Will you tell me yours?”