Work Text:
COHORT INTELLIGENCE FILES
As outlined in emergency planning guidance regarding
As suggested by the Cohort emergency protocol on
While specific guidelines for the wholesale collapse of the Cohort and the Empire do not exist, this report is made in hopes that
A report, assembled by Captain J. Deuteros (Dead Fleet, Dve Territorials 12th Necromancer's Unit). Concerning, chiefly, events occurring at the so-called 'safe house' to which myself and several former inhabitants of the Nine Houses have been summarily exiled 'for our health'. I suspect death is imminent. This report has been recorded on flimsy, due to the inability of the author to access or utilize subdermal implants at present. Appendices and specimens are locked in the same box these files are stored in, and labeled as noted in the contents page, for future reference.
Given that my fellow captives are not perturbed by this situation and make semi-frequent contact with Republic agents, they must be presumed compromised, and should not be shown any element of this report until a substantial threat screening has been made. I have included a rudimentary observation on the matter in Appendix A of this report.
***
ENTRY: MIRABELLE SEASON
On the first day of our arrival at the 'safe house', Coronabeth Tridentarius came gleaming into the room, backlit by the late-afternoon sun, and handed me an object. I observed it warily. It appeared to be a small and unremarkable plum, of a variety I did not recognise. The skin was yellow-ish, and a little dusty from the road. "Mirabelle," she said, brightly. "Looks like the first of the season. Isn't that fun? We have them on the Third, in the glasshouses - the atmosphere is no good for them, of course, but they do well enough under the right care. They don't look much, but they taste delightful." She winked.
"Thank you," I said, and put it in my pocket.
She dusted her hands off with an uncharacteristically sincere grin. "They're ever so good, Jody, I mean it. You'll see. We used to have the most tremendous tarts back home-"
"That's no way to speak about your mother, Princess," said Gideon, stomping into view with a big shiny grin and a bigger, shiner suitcase. "Now, where did you want me to put this, again?"
Coronabeth gasped. "Nav, do you know, that's actually what your mother said to me last night when I-"
I absented myself from the room before I could hear what anyone's mother had or had not been doing last night.
The conversation was, after all, unlikely to contain any information worth including in this report. Gideon Nav's mother was notably dead, and the Queen of Ida was under de facto house arrest on what remained of the former Third House, at the behest of the Interregnum Council of the Republic of Heaven (N.B. my observations regarding, interactions with, and best surmise of the military structure thereof are included in Appendices D through H of this report).
I took myself to the room I had been allocated, and found it to be dry, relatively clean if somewhat dusty, and free from any noticeable wires or wards. I stripped the bedding from both beds, moved all the furniture, and lifted a few suspect floorboards, behind which I discovered nothing but more dust and two rather surprised spiders. Relatively reassured by this - though I made a note to remain cautious and to perform spot checks at regular intervals - I re-made the beds, and placed Marta Dyas' rapier on one. I sat on the other. The exertion of moving furniture had made me dizzy, and my bad leg was intermittently seizing up. I gripped it with my arm until it stilled, and found the effort had exhausted me.
I did not wish to nap, but my body gave way. This has been something of a theme, of late, and not one I have relished.
Some hours later, after I shook myself awake out of some blue-lit and horrendous dream, I unpacked my bag. Then I stripped off my boots and jacket which - intolerably - I had slept in. In the pocket was the plum that the Crown Princess of Ida had handed me that morning, miraculously whole and uncrushed. I wanted, very badly, to know what it tasted like.
I dusted it off until it shone and set it on my bedside table.
A little over a week later, after one of my more intense fainting spells came over me at the dinner table, Gideon and Coronabeth had to help me all the way up to my room, much to my displeasure. Once there, of course, Coronabeth spotted it: the plum - half-shriveled and foul-sweet as it slowly turned to rot.
"Jody," she said, once she was done fussing at Gideon for the imagined slight of placing me down too roughly on the bed, "Darling, dearest Jody - what on earth do you still have this horrid little thing still sitting around for? It's gone entirely bad. Didn't you eat it?"
I shook my head. There was blood-sweat pooling in my ears, even though to my knowledge I had done no necromancy in a month or more. The capacity was, to be frank, beyond me. "Couldn't bear to," I said, once I'd summoned up the strength to speak.
The Crown Princess of Ida cocked her head, gold spilling over her shoulder and tumbling over the vast expanse of her chest. Her dress was very thin. She pouted. "I picked it just for you."
"I know," I mumbled, as my eyes slid closed. "Yes. That's why."
***
ENTRY: A POISONING ATTEMPT
I tolerated the mirabelles. I tolerated, even, being hand-fed them on occasion, which I found insulting and which Coronabeth clearly delighted in for that very reason. My solace, at least, was that almost everyone else would summarily leave the room when she started doing it, presumably to spare me the embarrassment that the act entailed.
I kept the pits (N.B. these are stored in a sealed jar marked Specimen B, for potential future testing). At first I was unsure why I felt the need to do this, but I began to note a certain feverishness when I consumed them, and this made me suspicious of potential poisoning attempts. Given my generally degraded health, however, I felt it possible that the fever and the plums were unrelated, and so this suspicion remained a relatively small concern until the florals incident this morning.
I came downstairs early - my body, if nothing else, still kept Cohort time - and found Coronabeth at the breakfast table with Pyrrha Dve, a phenomenal amount of flowers, and a very alarming grin. Pyrrha was not a surprise. But Coronabeth normally didn't surface until well after noon.
"Princess," I said, with a reflexive bow. "Dve. Good morning."
"Jody, darling," Coronabeth beamed, "I'm decorating. Sit down." Inexplicably, she patted her knee.
"For fuck's- the sun's barely up. Let me eat my damn muesli," grumbled Pyrrha, though I saw no evidence to suggest anybody was stopping her.
Coronabeth ignored her. "Come here, Jody. I want to see which ones suit you best."
"Pardon?" I said.
"Florals," she said, "for your room."
"I don't need florals in my room. Thank you."
"Oh, please," she pouted, her eyes enormous. "For me?"
"You can put florals in your own room, Princess," I told her, passing by her to the cupboard to fetch a meal bar. "Those will be for you." My nose was, for some reason, starting to itch.
"Alright, well, help me choose for my room, then."
"I don't see why my input there would matter."
"Well, if you're in my room-"
"Why would I be? It's yours."
"Jo-dy," she groaned, half-swooning over the side of her chair and into Dve's shoulder. "Please please please come and choose some pretty flowers with me."
I pulled a chair up with a sigh. "Very well. Five minutes."
What I proceeded to discover was that I seemed to be substantially reactive to almost all of the planet's native flora. This amused Coronabeth fantastically, although Dve appeared entirely fed up with the mixture of loud sniffling (on my part) and insipid giggling (on Coronabeth's part). After a minute or so she stood up with a groan and stalked off elsewhere with her cereal.
I made note of this: Pyrrha Dve was willing to leave me to the wolves, if it suited her. I would not forget this fact.
In any case. My reactions to the flowers were so severe that I felt myself growing suspicious, again, of Coronabeth's motivation. She pressed flower after flower into my hands, my face - brushed the blooms up against my cheek, smeared pollen on my nose. I felt feverish, again. Dizzy. Her face was closer than it ought to be, as though I had leaned in. My core was, clearly, failing me. Some kind of nerve poison? Something muscular? My head swam.
Eventually, she proffered a flower which did not immediately make me sneeze. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stared down at it. "Well," I managed, thickly, "this one isn't so bad, I suppose."
The flower to which I had not reacted - at least, inasmuch as I could tell, since her method was introducing so much cross-contamination that my eyes were still stinging vaguely from the previous several blooms - was small, and blue, with wiry leaves that haloed the flower. It was curious-looking. Less ostentatious than most she had tried. (N.B. while I did not immediately recognise most of the flowers she offered to me, I have included some rudimentary sketches in Appendix C of this report, in case the information should prove useful later.) She looked at it very closely, then at me. "Singular. I think I rather like it, actually."
Then she thrust some sort of large, multi-layered pink rose into my vicinity, and I promptly sneezed so violently that I blew a half dozen of the wretched, simpering petals clean off the stem.
She giggled. "Oh you are hilarious with that, Jody. Here, let's try some more."
It was at this point I began to seriously consider the possibility that Coronabeth Tridentarius was trying to murder me.
***
ENTRY: A CELEBRATION
I awoke early on the day of her birthday, dressing in the neatest and most intact rendition of my uniform I had been able to salvage. It would not have passed muster in any formal Cohort setting, but I had pressed and ironed it when I laid it out the night before, and Paul had proved surprisingly knowledgeable in the business of removing stains and repairing small degradations of the cloth. I queried the source of this knowledge - Hect, presumably, had been the expert mender of the two - and they gave me the strangest look. Camilla Hect, they said, never mended anything when she could set it on fire and start again instead. Go figure. When I pressed - was it, then, Sextus who had the expertise in darning - they said I like my socks. I like them a lot and I learned to fix them. It's not hard. I'll show you how.
My necromantic ability remains too profoundly stunted to make much observation of the nature of Paul. They are sporadically quite funny, which I dislike. They enjoy music, and sweet tea, and rain. When they are displeased or angered, the air around them takes on a strange, almost metallic scent. I have tried, very earnestly, to observe them and to parse out Hect from Sextus in their movement, their aptitude, their little turns of phrase, and for the most part, I have failed.
Most days, all I see is Marta. I watch them, whole and unwhole as they are, and I feel something that is neither grief nor love nor envy. A shapeless, aching thing for which I do not know the name.
Some days when Paul looks back I think I see it in them, too.
In any case, they helped me mend my uniform, which I saw fit to wear in anticipation of an invite to a party. But as the day wore on I saw neither silk-soft hide nor golden hair of the Crown Princess of Ida, and I began to become alarmed.
Eventually, I went to check her bedroom. I did not wish to go there, because it felt-
It felt like an imposition. An incursion into a space I had no right to enter. Still. I went. And when I knocked she answered, listless and half-whispered: "Oh, do come in."
I stood in the doorway. The room was filled with those strange, small blue flowers from the other week - I wondered if she might be attempting to decimate the only population of wild flowers here to which I was not allergic. I wouldn't have put it past her. "I was concerned," I said, my hand still on the door. "I hadn't seen you at all today."
Coronabeth rolled over on the covers with a great, languid sigh. Her robe was slipping off her shoulder, and her sheets were silken and pale blue. "Come in properly, won't you, darling?"
"No," I said.
"Jody-Judy-Jane," she pouted, "It's my birthday. Please. Come and get into bed with me."
"No," I said, and then - because it was her birthday, and because her voice was hoarse with tears, and because I didn't want to provoke her to start inventing any more absurdist nicknames; "Fine. Sit up."
She rolled over once again and sat, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed, robe all tangled up beneath her so her left thigh was visible almost up as far as the hip. "I like your uniform," she said, glancing at me from beneath her lashes as I approached the bed. Her eyes were very bloodshot, and her nose was red. She looked perfect, as she always did.
I nodded. "Yes. I like-" I cut myself off. "Right. Well. I was- I wondered where you'd gone. Are you… well?"
"I'm wonderful." She sighed. "All my life," she said, "all my life I wanted a birthday party of my own. And now I'm going to have so very many of them." Her eyes were fathomless beneath the drying tears. Oceanic. She clapped her hands together brightly. "Lucky me!"
I sat. In deference to her great sorrow, I permitted myself to sit close enough that our legs touched. And I waited.
She leant in and took my hands. "I felt so relieved, you know. When I- because it was a body, the second that she hit the floor. It wasn't her at all. They had the necromancers check, after, but I knew. I knew straight away. And I was- I'd been so afraid, and-" she shook her head. "Is that awful? I can't take it back. That's the first thing that I thought. I thought, I'm glad she's dead. I love her so much. But I'm glad."
It had taken ten people and a tranquilizer to get Coronabeth off her sister's body, and three more to pull the bloody sword out of their intertwined and clinging hands. And she'd been wailing for a medic the entire time, swearing blind she'd felt a pulse. This didn't feel like the time to mention that. So I said what people always do about the dead when they don't have anything to say: "I'm sorry."
"I really, really miss her."
"Yes."
"More than anything, Jody. More than I'd miss breathing, if I couldn't do that."
"I know."
"Sometimes I think I'll kill myself about it, but what's the point, if she's not here to see me dead and lovely?" She tossed her hair over her shoulder and sighed, utterly beautiful and utterly forlorn. Before I could respond, she tossed her hair again and carried on; "And I miss Babs sometimes, too. I do. Not much, but sometimes. He was my best friend, did you know that? I didn't like him very much, and I treated him awfully, but he was, still, all the same. Only- who'd pick Babs over me? Why didn't-" She sniffed again. Wiped snot off her upper lip with the back of her sleeve. Somehow, even that looked gorgeous, when she did it. "When people die it ought to- it ought to resolve things, and all I feel is- maybe she's coming back? That's why. Maybe she's coming back. Maybe- if I could get you to the body, Jody-"
"No," I said.
She nodded. "No. Of course. I- yes. That's good."
And then I put my arm around her, stiffly, while she sobbed, which had happened at every birthday party of hers I'd ever been to. At some point she half broke off and said, "Well, can I kiss you, then?" and she sobbed again when I said no.
That had also happened at every birthday party of hers I'd ever been to. In some strange way, I think it was a comfort to us both.
***
ENTRY: REGARDING THIS REPORT
This is not the first report I've made that isn't entirely… that is, I understand it is unlikely I will have cause to send it on to anyone. That there may not be anyone left to send it to. I am not, for whatever else my sins may be, entirely deluded.
But I write it because I do not know what else to do, and I believe that the act of writing it has a value of its own.
Coronabeth did not have time for the subtleties of my reasoning on the matter.
"I swear, Jody," she said, swanning into the kitchen with a scowl like a sunflare, "I've been out there calling and calling for you for the last half-hour," (which meant she had called twice within the past two minutes). "I need somebody to carry my basket while I'm picking plums. If you're still writing that wretched little diary of yours instead of-"
"Report," I said. "It is an official Cohort docu-"
She squealed. "Oh! Shut up!"
I shut up. This did not appear to help.
She scowled. "Why don't you kiss your 'official Cohort documents', if you like them so much? In fact- perhaps you do. That would explain a lot."
"I do not," I told her. "Spit would be abrasive to the flimsy."
She made another furious squeaking noise. "It was intolerable enough the first time round. You're making me understand why Millie found you so desperately annoying the whole time. Here-" and she snatched the pages from my hand, "stop- who's even going to read it, Jody? They're all dead, or missing, or-"
To my eternal and unmitigated suprise, Harrowhark Nonagesimus came to my rescue. She had been sitting at the far side of the kitchen making furtive attempts to kick Gideon Nav under the table, and for the most part failing because her legs were too short. But at the sight of Coronabeth holding my report she sprung up like an avenging angel, and had the volume clutched in her own hands before the Princess could even blink.
"Judith Deuteros," she said, glaring upward at Coronabeth with a cold and perfectly incisive fury, "has every right to pen a report to somebody who will not read it, or cannot read it, or is dead, or does not exist, or- or to whoever she wants, in fact. And, so help me God," she drew herself up to her full height, which was small but oddly imposing nonetheless, and glared around the room, hands clutching the book and tangled in her prayer beads, "anyone who has any sort of problem with that can go through me."
Behind her, I saw Gideon Nav - for the first time in my observation - visibly restrain herself from saying something stupid. This moment of self-control was so astonishing to me mostly because I had frankly presumed her to be fundamentally deficient of the faculty. I briefly considered re-appraising my assessment of her potential threat level, but I then watched her immediately lose the battle to the very next stupid thing which arrived in her mind, and realised that her moment of uncharacteristic restraint had probably been some sort of brief seizure or conniption of the brain rather than any substantial sign of life.
"So true, Nonagesimus," she said. "And, honestly, ladies," here she addressed the room, arms spread wide in supplication, "why sit around here arguing when we could all go outdoors and put on very thin white shirts and throw buckets of water at each oth-"
"Shut up, Nav," said Harrow, waspishly.
"I'm just saying-"
"Griddle."
There was a moment of silent… something, then, that passed between the two of them. It did not appear to be a formal communication system - rather, Harrow glared, and Gideon dipped her grin slightly, and after a moment she nodded. "Alright. Point taken, my caliginous sovereign." Gideon made a fussy little impression of a bow before she turned on her heel and looped her arm into Coronabeth's. "That's our cue, I think. Shall we?"
Coronabeth deflated slightly, "Well. I can see where I'm not wanted." She linked her arm with Gideon's. "Let's."
As they left I heard her add - loudly enough that I felt certain it was targeted - "And, for what it's worth, darling, I think a wet t-shirt competition is a splendid idea, honestly, I really do…"
This felt cruel. The idea of wet t-shirts was clearly upsetting Harrow for some reason, and it seemed uncharitable for Coronabeth to exploit that in this way. Still. It was not by any means out of character. The Princess had always taken a great and indulgent enjoyment in making people squirm. That was her prerogative.
I watched her go. Watched her glance back, checking, presumably, for Harrow's reaction, but only catching mine. I have no idea what she intuited from my expression - which was, I believe, utterly neutral - but she winked at me about it just before she stepped out of the room. I caught a glimpse of her leaning into Gideon as she went, and then the door swung shut and they were gone.
The room was silent.
I had almost forgotten Harrow's presence until she walked up to me, stiffly, and placed my report back into my hands. She was shaking. Or- the book shook, anyway, when she passed it over. I think that must have been her.
"Thank you," I said.
"Do not take this to mean I intend to establish any sort of… association," she said, stiffly. "That is- friendship."
I nodded. "Understood."
She nodded in return, and drew back, pulling her veil back down over her face. "I have been holding Vespers at sunset in the library. It is- the service is largely silent. Very Ninth. So, if you have need of a quiet space to write up your reports…"
"My room is quiet,' I told her.
"Of course," she said. "I understand."
I write this entry, nevertheless, from the library, at sunset. It seemed unwise to pass up a chance to better observe Harrowhark's movements and necromantic capacity - and, being here, I see that the location has another advantage, too.
In the yard below the library, easily visible through the deep-set, paneled windows, is the yard. And, at this hour, it seems, Coronabeth and Gideon take to the space to spar.
So, before me, as I write - Gideon, sweating through her black shirt, bare arms gleaming in the evening light, and Coronabeth, untouchable and sunlit, all in white. Even when Gideon manages to roll her onto the floor (which has happened twice, so far, since neither of them seems to be following any sort of duelling etiquette and the matches semi-frequently devolve into hair-pulling and ankle-kicking) and she lands in the dust, the light catches her shirt such that when she stands she comes up glowing. Still clean and bright. As though no dirt the planet holds could sully her.
They both fight lightly, as though among friends. They both pull blows they could have landed. They both laugh, often enough. Gideon wins the match perhaps two times out of three - maybe more, but they are lax and draw no parameters for victory, which makes it hard to judge the outcome. All this is lazy and it is stupid and it is deeply, deeply baffling to me. But I will note this much: Gideon pulls plenty of blows that would only ever have maimed, even if they struck full force.
Every single blow Coronabeth pulls is a killer. Head, neck, heart. I don't think she even notices she's doing it. Gideon certainly does not. But I do.
I do.
***
ENTRY: SUSPICIOUS NOCTURNAL ACTIVITY
The night before last, late, she came to the door of my room and knocked. When I answered (armed, of course, since my necromantic ability remained so weak, and being cautious to wedge the door open only the smallest necessary fraction with my good foot), she told me that she had believed, mistakenly, that this was her room. I pointed out that this was unlikely, given that her room was a full floor up from mine and, also, that nobody in their right mind went about knocking at their own door.
"But I am not at all in my right mind, Jody," she said. I did believe her. She looked blue and curiously fragile in the moonlight - soft, yes, and tender, but uncertain in her stance. She was clutching at her nightgown as if terribly afflicted, though I realised much later that she may simply have been trying to hold it shut, since it appeared to have been cut substantially lower than was at all practical or reasonable for the intended function of the garment.
In any case. I asked if she was in need of medical attention, which, true, I could provide if needed - but I impressed quite firmly that my training was rudimentary, and focused on field first-aid, and that I was therefore unlikely to be the best person to attend such matters. "Jody," she said, which was not an answer. Her voice came out low and breathy, and she curled her fingers around the door with such abject loveliness that I found myself opening it several inches more, until I had almost shuffled into the corridor beyond.
This was because I found her beguiling quality and impractically flimsy clothing suspicious, and wished to free up room to move my sword hand, should it become necessary.
"Please," she said, "tell me you don't want me, then. If that's all it is."
"That isn't-" I found myself unable to speak as I desired to, a great heaviness settling around my tongue, my throat, into my chest. "It isn't that."
"Then let me in," she pleaded, her hand drifting from the door to touch mine where it clutched my rapier. Marta's rapier. My rapier. I did not brush her off. I could not move.
"I don't know how," I said.
She kissed the first two fingers of her right hand, lightly, and pressed them to my lips before she went. Her hand was cold, but I-
In any case. I found myself again some fifteen minutes later, still standing in the doorway with my sword-hand going numb. Coronabeth had vanished. And my face was wet.
I double-bolted the door before I lay down to sleep, and when she knocked again last night I drew my blade and sat it on my knee, and did not answer. Eventually, she left. And this was good.
But my heart was beating so fast, all the same. Poison, I thought, wretchedly, somehow she's poisoned me.
***
ENTRY: A MUTUAL FAILURE
"You know, I don't know how, either," she said, slumped over the kitchen table with an expression of such bitter defeat I could scarcely bear to look at it.
"You don't know how to do what, Princess?" I asked.
She ignored me. "They're rotten. All of them. The plums. Falling off the tree and overripe."
"I'm sorry," I said, stiffly.
"I wanted to- to bring you-" she shook her head, great tumbling waves of gold shaking loose around her heaving shoulders. "Nevermind. Season's over. It's over. I-" and she burst into stunning, desperate tears. "I don't know how."
I was reminded so forcibly, then, of every birthday party of hers I'd ever been to. Every funeral she'd shown up at, bright eyed and unannounced. Of her flowers and her tantrums and her gifts - of all the times I'd wanted so awfully to kiss her, and all the times that, when asked, I'd told her no. I felt so sick with the desire to step forward and reach out that I briefly wondered if I really had been poisoned, and then I recalled that she had not, in fact, given me anything to eat that evening.
There was no poison. No secret plot. No deeper, better explanation that would look better written down in this report. There was only me, and the wanting, and the impossible, uncrossable void of a few feet of kitchen floor.
"People must tell you how they love you all the time," I said.
"They do," she sniffled, glancing up at me with her vast and gleaming eyes.
And I do, I thought, I do, all the time. But what I said was, "I want-" and then, "I am not good at wanting. Forgive me that."
Lord, she was so tall, when she stood. She crossed those few steps to me as if it was only distance that had ever come between us. As though it were a simple thing, lightly done. There was so much of Coronabeth. And so little left of me. And her hands, her hands, her hands.
Her mouth.
I kissed her. For the record. I kissed her. And I did it for no reason but that I had wanted to, and I did not know how to want but I did it anyway, clumsy and fumbling and unsure.
***
[N.B. (added at a later date) several dozen pages of the report are missing here. This is because SOMEBODY is incautious in how she stores my documents, and keeps putting them in multiple separate boxes because 'the little ones fit the room's ambience better, darling, don't you think?' - I will endeavor to re-file them properly at some point.]
***
ENTRY: MIRABELLE SEASON, AGAIN
We walked out onto the downs beyond the safe house after lunch, as had become our habit. My leg gave me a little trouble, but the walk to our bench was not too far, and my cane was sturdy.
The weather was fine. High summer. Coronabeth was wearing a very frivolous hat. I was wearing a much less frivolous hat, which I had objected to, because I did not believe in sunstroke. But Coronabeth had insisted that sunstroke believed in me, and she had proceeded to compel me into wearing it via a series of persuasive methods which I do not think would be at all relevant or proper to include in this report. Diary. Report.
In any case, I was wearing the stupid hat.
"I wish sometimes I had a talent," said Coronabeth, once we'd settled down, "for poetry, maybe, or for art. So I could make things for you."
"I have no eye for either," I said, flatly, "So I fear that I would not appreciate it."
She laughed. "For the best, then, maybe."
"Hmm."
We both watched the sky, for a while, in silence. Sometimes that was easier than looking at each other.
There were clouds, far off. A buzzard wheeling overhead, pursued by crows. The sounds of crickets in the long grass. The wind blew through her curls as she leaned in to me. "The mirabelles are out, again,' she said. "First good one of the season. Here. For you." She laid her hand out in my lap and steadily unfurled her palm.
I took the plum, rubbed it briefly on my shirt, and ate it. She was right. It was very good.
When I spat the pit down into the weeds she looked at me, sidelong. "Not keeping that?"
"I see no cause." I said. "There will be others."
"There will?"
I shrugged. "That's how plums work, I believe."
She laughed. "Jody," she said, and nothing else. This did not alarm me as it might once have done. I had come to appreciate that she sometimes simply liked to say my name.
She didn't bother to lean in for the kiss. She just tipped her head, gorgeous and sunlit, and let me come to her.