Morning put everything back where it belonged. Or tried.

  The Libraries woke with their usual manners: lamps trimmed, the bad hinge remembering itself, dust doing quiet ballet where sun found it. Tris rolled a cart through the Eastern Room with her harmless smile on and the memory of a bolt lifting tucked behind her teeth where nobody could see it.

  “Librarian,” Thalen said, eyes on a memo that had already given up. “Abridged annals for the grain subcommittee.”

  “On it,” she chirped, because chirping opened more paths than competence.

  Prince Tamryn arrived like decent weather with a coat over his arm and no trace of last night except the seam you’d only see if you’d sewn it. He was very good at being unremarkable. The ring didn’t turn. His eyes were sensible red, not too bright. He stood the right distance from important people. Ordinary. Right up until his gaze passed briefly over Tris like someone tasting a word he knew better than to say.

  She didn’t look back.

  At the first break he fetched a jug of water that wasn’t needed and set it near a minister who always forgot he was thirsty. Tris shelved two things even clerks could find and one thing only she would be able to three years from now, and the House, which has opinions, approved of her distribution of mercy.

  Later, near the service stair where the light goes kind, they arrived at the same time because that’s what happens to people who avoid each other in buildings that enjoy arranging meetings.

  “Good morning,” he said. It sounded like a test he’d studied for.

  “Mm,” she said, breezy. “Did you enjoy the ball?”

  “Best I’ve ever had,” he said, completely straight, and then had to pretend he’d meant the pastries. “Those plum things.”

  “Tragic,” she said solemnly. “I missed the plums.”

  “I’ll write a petition,” he said. A corner of his mouth betrayed him and then learned its lesson and stopped.

  She let her hand brush his sleeve by accident. He looked at the hand like it was a new entry in an index and then away, because he was good at surviving. She wasn’t going to congratulate him for that. Surviving was the minimum.

  “Later?” he said, finally letting the question exist in the world without thinking it had to be a vow.

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  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, the way one tells a cat not to steal a roast, and walked away before the stair could start having opinions.

  They tried not to make later happen. The afternoon did its best to help: a student misfiled six pages as a prank and looked startled when the prank failed to land; a courier arrived with the wrong seal and the right message; someone tried to gossip near the atlas case and the atlas case refused to be in the same room with gossip.

  At dusk, the copy room hummed with quiet work that wasn’t happening. Tris put her palm to the frame; the latch behaved. She didn’t decide to wait. She just didn’t leave.

  He arrived a minute after the clock sighed the hour, coat damp from fog. He didn’t close the door because she already had. He didn’t say anything because anything would have made it smaller. He crossed the room like a man who knows where a thing is and kissed her like he’d been rehearsing and finally got the stage.

  She laughed into it; he swallowed the laugh and returned it better. Buttons were a problem for hands that were trying to be polite; she solved them anyway. He tugged her skirt up without ceremony; she caught his wrist, not to stop him—just because touching him was a bad habit that felt like a good one.

  “Hi,” he said against her mouth, which was idiotic enough that she bit his lower lip for it and he grinned into the bite.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He turned her, palms finding the hips he’d found last night by accident, and set her against the worktable. The wood gave a little approving hum because old furniture loves routine more than people do.

  “Here?” he said, a real question, not a performance.

  “Here,” she said, because she preferred the truth.

  He pushed into her—one sure, hot slide that stole both their breaths. It wasn’t careful because careful would have been lying. It was steady, intent, the rhythm of someone who had spent a day pretending not to remember and remembered anyway. She shifted; he followed, grinning when she swore under her breath. His hand found hers on the table; he squeezed once and let go so she could brace.

  Footsteps went down the far hall; both of them went still out of reflex; when the floor quieted, he started again—closer, lower, smarter—picking up the exact angle that had unstitched her in the dark and doing it in lamplight.

  “Show-off,” she muttered because complimenting men is dangerous.

  “Greedy,” he corrected, breathless, and kept the pace until her mouth opened and nothing sensible came out. She came first—quiet, mean, satisfied. He lasted three more measured strokes like a man finishing a line properly and spilled with a stifled sound against her neck that would have embarrassed them both in public.

  They stood there, breathing in the smallest room in the world. He eased out, careful. She straightened her skirt; he fixed his collar; they both buttoned each other once like a joke the room couldn’t overhear.

  “We are not doing that again,” she said, perfectly pleasant.

  “Absolutely not,” he said, equally pleasant, already failing to hide the grin.

  “Soup?” he offered, because he was who he was.

  “Later,” she said, because she was who she was, and stole one last quick kiss that promised she wasn’t lying.

  He left first, harmless stitched back on without a seam showing. She counted to ten. The latch clicked like a kept secret.

  Outside, the palace changed its clothes for night. Inside, the Libraries put “ordinary weather” back on the shelf and pretended it fit.