6. Caius
SIX
CAIUS
The journals go to Elio within the hour.
I deliver them myself rather than sending a courier, which earns me a raised eyebrow from Elio and no comment at all—which from Elio is its own kind of comment.
“Encoded,” he says, already flipping through Mathilda’s cramped handwriting. “Give me a day. Maybe two.”
“Make it one.”
“Someone’s impatient.”
I don’t dignify that with a response. He knows exactly why I’m impatient. Everyone in this building seems to know, which is either a testament to how poorly I’ve been hiding it or proof that I stopped trying weeks ago without noticing.
I spend the next three hours the way I spend most hours—patrol reports, territory disputes, a formal complaint from the bakery about a gnome who keeps arm-wrestling the display case—and think about Anouk bent over her desk, alone, carrying a murder investigation and a coven and the weight of everyone else’s expectations without once asking for help.
She won’t ask. I’ve learned that much about her.
So I stop by the apothecary on my way back—not for a reason the report would justify, no threat to assess, no protocol requiring it. I bring tea. The kind Sunny makes for people who’ve forgotten to eat.
She’s still bent over the notes when I let myself in, ink-stained fingers, eyes tired enough that she doesn’t hear the bell.
I set the tea down and leave before she notices, before she can tell me she doesn’t need looking after.
She doesn’t. She’s never needed anyone.
I stay anyway. Just longer than the tea requires, watching from across the square until her light finally goes out, and telling myself it’s vigilance and knowing, the whole time, that it stopped being only that a long time ago.