[ Bastien winces, in a playful way, as if someone’s caught him sneaking somewhere he shouldn’t be but also won’t be in any real trouble over.

Beneath it, relief. That it’s only Alexandrie’s keen instincts. That it’s something he could have plausibly denied, if he’d been of a mind to, and something that begins and ends with her. Not what he’d worried it might have been—those reckless, indulgent minutes spent with his head on Byerly’s chest in the firelit dark of camp, spotted in the jungle and carried back to Alexandrie in Kirkwall along a chain of whispers that he’d now have to feel foolish and ineffective for failing to hear.

Still, ]

Mince alors, I am slipping. But I suppose it is fine, this once, since things have worked out as they have and you will not be breaking glasses or sending assassins.

[ There’s more he’d like to know, if he could know anything he liked. But even if it wouldn’t be needy and pathetic—has he said anything, eugh—he wouldn’t ask her, because if their positions were reversed he wouldn’t answer.

So instead he finishes his little coffee and settles forward in his chair, ready to share her crystal if she’s ready to use it. ]