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The late evening had become Yor’s favorite time of day. It began with Anya’s bedtime routine. A bubble bath, drying and combing her hair, snuggle time, and two stories, one an exciting adventure and the second for winding down and drifting into calm.
Then came cleanup. The few other parents she knew disliked having to pick up after their children, but she didn’t mind it, especially when Loid helped. They worked alongside each other to sweep the stray dessert crumbs from the dining table, put away scattered toys and books that Anya had forgotten, and reach under couches and chairs for small items that had rolled underneath.
Their nightly tea ritual followed. They kept a variety of blends in the cupboard. Yor favored the fruity aromatic blends, while Loid preferred black tea with a splash of milk. Previously, they sat at the dining table and caught up about their day while waiting for the tea to steep. It hadn’t been an everyday thing, given Loid’s busy schedule and her weekly jobs from Garden.
But now, it was nearly an everyday thing. And they no longer sat at the dining table, but on the couch, side by side. Sometimes, they didn’t touch their tea at all.
Yor remembered the first time they had done this. On a whim, she had taken her mug to the living room and Loid had followed with only a hint of hesitation. The air had been tense with unspoken expectations, but not in a bad way. Ever since she’d confessed her feelings, the desires she’d kept bottled up billowed to the surface and suffused her every breath when he was in the same room.
He hadn’t said yes. But his request for her to wait felt like a delayed yes. For once she didn’t shrink into herself and twist her own hope into a self-deprecating shield.
She could feel it in his gaze. The way he looked at her had changed. The same finely honed instincts that enabled her to spot a hidden enemy in the dark could also perceive a new edge in her husband’s demeanor. It was both sweet and sharp, like a sugar-kissed blade.
And so, when he reached for her that first night in the living room, she reached back. His hand had trembled against her face, sliding into her hair with reverence. She felt the calluses on his palm and fingers. Similar to the ones she had, from gripping a weapon. From wielding that weapon with lethal force. From clawing into whatever handholds she could reach on the side of a brick building or an unfinished stone wall.
Instead of setting off warning bells, the thought that they were the same only made her melt further into his arms. Their first kiss was achingly soft. Loid was a man who planned his every move. Even when caught off guard, he rapidly created new plans as he went, mapping out the next five minutes, the next minute, the next ten seconds.
But this, he must have been planning for quite some time. It was perfect. It was everything she had dreamed about in a kiss. And she was with the man she loved. She didn’t know half of who he was and why he had told her to wait. But his touch was true and honest. He shuddered against her lips as she raked her fingers up the nape of his neck into his hair. He pushed forward just the slightest bit, and she yielded, reclining against the couch cushions as he wrapped his arms around her and leaned into the kiss.
Almost every night since then, they continued their dance in the living room, their tea growing cold on the coffee table beside them. They learned new steps each time without having to speak. The contours of their mouths. The texture of their hair. The inflections of their breathing, what made it hitch and stutter and sigh.
Yor envisioned the eventual destination they were heading toward with breathless anticipation. The feel of his warm hands and broad back and corded muscle drifted into her dreams, leaving her restless and flustered when she awoke. Her heart alternately floated and raced through each workday, yearning for what he would dare to show her next. He was taking just as many risks as she was. The knowledge that he was barely holding himself back thrilled her.
If she had any sense, she should have waited and kept her impulses at bay until he could give her a full answer, to unveil the shadows he had alluded to the day of her confession. But it had been a month, and he hadn’t told her anything of substance. Just brief reassurances when they reluctantly parted each night, steeped in apology and glazed with longing.
“Just a little longer,” he would say. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t.”
I want to, was always on the tip of her tongue. But she held back, too, and in the nameless hours of the night she ruminated on her own secrets. Just how much longer could she have him like this? Worshipful and adoring, blissfully unaware of the bloody truth of her profession and the sheer terror her codename evoked among the Ostanian underworld?
She would tell him when he told her, she decided. A fair and equal exchange, she hoped. But she knew it could not be equal. How could anything in his history possibly rival the depth and horror of hers?
—
There was a dire warning hammered into the minds of all WISE agents during basic training: Do not fall into emotional compromise. Be alert at all times as to where the line of no return was. Stay far away from that line.
To spies who had pledged to cast no shadow, real emotional attachments were the most powerful drug they could ever taste. One hit, and they were highly likely to crawl back for a second, a third, telling themselves each time would be the last. There were preventative measures to help an agent perceive and avoid that red line to begin with. There were also ways to recover quickly, to win back lost ground and cover up one’s mistakes.
All that training flew out the window when it came to Yor. Twilight had taken that first hit of his own volition. Though Yor had led him into the living room, he could have stopped and stayed in the kitchen. He could have even sat next to her chastely on the couch, or taken the armchair while she took the couch. They could have had a casual chat about their day and moved on without incident.
But his resolve had steadily eroded ever since that night Yor had wept in his arms and revealed her genuine affection for him. He had kissed her, innocently, on the temple. He had told himself that that was as far as he would go, that that small kiss had been sufficient to reassure her of his commitment.
Commitment to what? To stay with her? To blow his own cover to a civilian, and endanger not only his current mission but his ability to operate in Ostania? She knew his true face. She knew him, because the borders between Twilight and Loid Forger had become so porous that she could paint a portrait of his true self like no other civilian could.
He had thought of all the ways he might broach the topic with his handler. To inform his agency that he intended to resign after Strix. There was no other way he could see this play out in any reasonable fashion. If he were to stay with Yor and Anya after the mission ended, he could not afford to endanger them by continuing as an active duty agent. And WISE wouldn’t want a compromised agent retaining access to all its resources and active missions and classified information.
His handler would rake him over the coals. She would threaten to pull him from the field or send him into retraining or uproot him from Ostania altogether. But he knew her well. Once her fury abated and cold rationality reclaimed the reins, she would negotiate. She had once been a wife and a mother while on active duty. She had even begun teasing him about his cover family during debriefings. She was fond of Anya. She had seen how family life had changed him, and had never reprimanded him for it.
Still, Twilight put off the meeting. He felt like a coward, but every time he seemed to muster his resolve, he faltered when Sylvia cast her sharp, world-weary gaze on him and assigned him a new, urgent side mission that could not wait. WISE was perpetually understaffed and woefully short of well-trained, versatile operatives. It often felt as if he carried half the agency on his back. If he left, he could not imagine how they could cover his workload and achieve the same results.
If he succeeded on Strix, perhaps there wouldn’t be such a dire need. That was what he told himself.
Every night he joined Yor in the living room, he couldn’t help but hate himself a little more. For his own weakness in succumbing to compromise so quickly, and for his utter lack of self-control. He could pull back. It made sense to pull back, to wait, to avoid leading Yor on only to let her down if the chips didn’t fall in their favor.
He was no better than a rookie, ensnared within his own honey trap and unable to separate fact from fabrication. It was so easy to forget all the burdens that hung over him when he was with Yor. Holding her close, carding his hands through her silken hair, tasting the sweetness of her lips and swallowing the sound of her sighs. She was perfection. Innocence and want, soft curves and coiled strength, all intertwined.
So easy to forget.
Until one night, she jolted under his hands, and he immediately disengaged, leaning back until no part of their bodies touched.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, and cursed himself. Careless, crude, overeager fool!
He’d had his hands up the back of her shirt, his fingers snaking under the band of her bra. He’d been a second away from unclasping it when she’d reacted with clear alarm.
Shit. This was bad. He was so far gone. He was an idiot, a complete cad. He had crossed a major boundary and disrespected her.
“I’m so sorry, Yor, I didn’t mean to scare you. That was unforgivable. I…”
At the sight of her widened eyes and rapid breathing, his mastery of words vanished. He had royally fucked up.
He stood up abruptly and was about to back away when she stopped him with one hand on his knee.
“It’s okay, Loid. Please, sit down. I’m not mad at you. I was just…surprised.”
Her voice was shaky but sincere. He dared to meet her eyes, unable to feel anything but damning guilt. She smiled at him in her shy way. She was still blushing, her hair and clothes disheveled from how intense they’d gotten. He probably looked similar.
Then she laughed. Doubled over, covering her mouth with both hands, laughter that shook her whole body. He took a seat a respectful distance away and waited in embarrassment until her laughter tapered into giggles.
“Oh my goodness, Loid, you look so serious!” she finally said. “It’s okay! I promise. Honestly, I’m a bit flattered that you could get so carried away. You’re always so perfect and in control.”
“Well. This is not an excuse by any means,” he ventured, clawing himself bit by bit out of his pit of shame, “but you do make it quite difficult to stay in control.”
She blushed even more deeply and covered her face. “Don’t say things like that! I don’t know how to react.”
Before she could wave it off or continue her attempts to make him feel better, he cut to the chase. “I apologize again, Yor. That was inappropriate and disingenuous of me. A month ago, I asked you to wait. And then we started doing…this. And I lost my sense. I haven’t been acting with the integrity you deserve. I still haven’t given you that answer I promised.”
“Oh, Loid.” The way she tilted her head and softened her gaze was so her. Compassionate in any circumstance. “I still think you’re beating yourself up for no reason. It’s not like I don’t want it…I just…didn’t have time to really think about it. What it means. For what happens next. I mean to say, it takes two to keep doing this as long as we have. So please don’t be so serious.”
“I do need to be serious,” he countered, and resolved right then that his next meeting with Sylvia would be it. He’d finally go through with it and stop pussyfooting around. “I won’t make you wait much longer. I will have an answer for you soon. In a few days.”
She reached for his hand and interlaced their fingers. Her countenance was full of understanding and adoration, and…regret? Almost as if she was prepared to lose this. To lose him.
He couldn’t have that. Praying he’d keep a level head, he drew her into his arms and simply hugged her until the tension in her figure slackened.
“You’re a good man,” she whispered in his ear. “No matter what, I know that’s the truth.”
—
Yor meant it. She hadn’t given Loid that reassurance lightly. She had thought carefully about what his secrets might be, and weighed each of the possibilities against her love for him.
Perhaps he had done some shady things as a doctor. Treated patients in a questionable manner. Or perhaps he might feel guilty if someone had taken their own life while under his care. Knowing how much he liked to plan and control his circumstances, she could imagine him feeling responsible for any negative outcomes in his patients’ lives.
Perhaps, before he had become a doctor, he had fought in the war. As they caressed each other these past few weeks, she had noticed several prominent scars on his arms, shoulders, and chest. Bullet wounds and gashes from a blade. If he had been a soldier, there was no telling what kind of trauma and shame he might still carry.
Or perhaps the scars weren’t from the war. Perhaps the patients who had chased them the night of Camilla’s party hadn’t been patients at all. When Yor thought about it, they had looked more like common thugs. The type she routinely faced on jobs. Maybe Loid had been involved in organized crime and crossed the wrong people or owed money to someone very powerful.
Maybe he was still involved. Maybe that was where he went all those late nights. Not to the hospital, but to conduct illicit business dealings.
But she couldn’t reconcile his image as a respected doctor and doting father with such activities. Why would he need the money? The medical field paid plenty well and gave him good standing in society. His daughter was already enrolled in the best school in the capital. Unless his late wife had been the one involved in crime? Was that how she had died so young?
Loid never spoke of his first wife. Yor had never seen any pictures of her. Was she even real? But, if he hadn’t been married before, where had Anya come from?
Perhaps he had had Anya out of wedlock? It was definitely looked down upon in Ostanian society. Usually the mother would be the one who raised the child, though, while the father was absent and at most sent money in secret to support the child’s basic needs. If Anya were the result of a love affair, Yor wouldn’t hold it against Loid. She would admire him even more for taking responsibility for his daughter as a single father.
Regardless of what his past held, the most troubling thought was if Loid’s secrets might land him in Garden’s crosshairs. What would Yor do on the slim chance Shopkeeper ordered her or one of her colleagues to assassinate him one day?
While part of her felt a deep-rooted fear at the prospect of defying Garden, she also knew in her heart that she could never harm Loid. She loved him. And she loved Anya. She would never forgive herself if she made the little girl cry.
She would protect them both, no matter the cost. And if Loid asked it of her, she would guard his secrets from Garden.
When Loid came home one afternoon, she knew this would be the night. Though he hid it well for Anya’s sake, he looked rattled. His perfectionist behaviors were on overdrive as he prepared dinner. He measured every ingredient to the exact line, watched the clock religiously, and fiddled with the dials on the stove so that the heat was just right.
Anya seemed to know that something was different about her parents’ dynamic tonight. She had definitely picked up on their growing closeness ever since the incident with her old clothes, and teased them more often. Right now, though, she was reticent and thoughtful. She obeyed all her father’s requests and reminders without complaint. As Yor tucked her into bed, she gave her mother an extra squeeze before letting go.
“I love you and Papa. You’re both the best. No matter what,” she said, her eyes sparkling with that uncanny perceptiveness she had always possessed. It had only sharpened over the past year, as she was in that precious phase of life where almost every other month her knowledge of the world and observation skills and speech patterns expanded by leaps and bounds.
“We love you too, sweetheart. Always,” Yor said, and kissed her forehead. She would give anything to keep this wonderful little family she had found.
The simple motions of boiling water and brewing tea carried extra weight tonight. She and Loid maneuvered around each other in knowing silence, with the unspoken agreement that they would only start talking when they had settled in the living room. For a moment he hesitated to sit next to her, eyeing the armchair instead. But she patted the seat beside her, and he relented.
Their teacups made a muffled clink against the coasters on the coffee table. Loid cleared his throat and straightened up. It was probably subconscious on his part, but he wasn’t putting his whole weight on the couch. He looked poised to jump up and flee at any moment.
“Yor, I asked you to wait for me a little more than a month ago. I had a lot of things to figure out on my end before I could feel like I was doing right by you. Not everything is resolved, but I’ve made enough progress that I can tell you some important facts about me to inform your decision.”
Her decision. She wanted to reach out and hug him. He sounded prepared for the worst.
“I understand if you get upset with me and feel betrayed. If it makes you angry enough to leave. It may make you question all the time we’ve spent together, and who I am as a person. I’m sorry if–”
“Loid,” Yor interrupted gently. “It’s alright. I won’t leave you.”
That familiar furrow appeared in his brow. “I’m not holding you to that, Yor. You really don’t know the extent of what I’m about to tell you.”
“And neither do you, about what I plan to tell you,” she said, and the furrow was replaced by a look of genuine surprise. “I’ve been keeping secrets of my own. Things you deserve to know, too. We’ll do a trade tonight. Maybe it’ll make it easier for both of us.”
His mouth had fallen slightly open, but he shut it as soon as he realized he was gawking. He took a deep breath. “Okay. I can’t imagine how yours could be worse than mine, but okay. Let’s trade.”
His hands twitched in his lap, and his throat constricted as he swallowed with more nervousness than she had ever seen from him.
“The reason I don’t have any clothes and toys from earlier in Anya’s life is…she’s adopted.”
Somehow in all her internal speculation about Anya, Yor had not considered this possibility. Loid and Anya were so close, their facial expressions and mannerisms so endearingly similar, that she had never questioned whether Anya was his biological child. She took in the newness of the fact, felt its foreign edges and the followup questions that soon sprung to mind. But she kept silent, and let him continue.
“I am not a widower. I never had a first wife.”
This, for some reason, stung. Like the pinch of a needle, painful but inoculating. For so long, she had constantly compared herself to the imagined portrait of a perfect woman, the love of Loid’s life, taken from him too soon. A woman who must have been ethereally graceful, poised, beautiful, well-educated, to capture the affection of a man as amazing as Loid.
But she was not real. She had never existed. All the insecure comparisons Yor had drawn had been meaningless in the end.
That did not mean Loid hadn’t had relationships before, though. Suddenly the shadows of his past loomed larger, with more questions. He was undoubtedly experienced in romancing women, with his warm smile and effortless charm. The way he listened so well and paid attention to her every need. There was no way a man as attractive as he was had been perpetually single.
That shouldn’t have mattered to her. Whether he were a monogamous widower or a serial playboy, what mattered was who he was now. The man sitting in front of her, confessing his secrets because he cared for her. He wanted to be with her, not anyone else.
He had confessed two secrets thus far. It was her turn.
“Before I met you–” he continued.
“Wait,” she said, and he stopped. “The night of Camilla’s party, when we first met. She said I used to work as a masseuse before City Hall. That isn’t true. I was never a masseuse, or an escort as she tried to imply. I’ve…never been with a man.”
She hadn’t meant it to be funny, but Loid grinned and made a sound in his throat as if holding back a laugh. She pouted in mock petulance.
“What?”
“I knew that, Yor. It was pretty obvious from the start that you had never even kissed anyone.”
She deflated a bit. It was hardly an equal trade, then, for his two momentous secrets. “Well, one small part of it is true. I did have to go to hotel rooms, but it wasn’t for…that.”
“It’s okay, Yor. Let me tell you something else, before you push yourself,” he said, and took her hand. His face grew serious again as he looked into her eyes. “There’s still a lot I have to tell you. But, no matter how bad it’ll sound, I want you to know that I truly care for Anya. And for you. I’ll still understand if you find it unforgivable. I already feel like the shittiest person alive as I try to imagine how you’ll react.”
She squeezed his hand in return, as if promising herself that she wouldn’t hate him. To commit ahead of time to forgiving him. Whether that was utterly foolish or the most courageous thing she had ever done, she wasn’t sure.
What could be so terrible that he would despise himself that much? Had he harmed Anya in some way? But Anya had never shown a hint of fear or distrust or discomfort around Loid.
“The night of that same party, when those men were chasing us,” Loid said. He had switched topics so randomly that it took her a second to get on the same page. “They were not my patients.”
Yor nodded slowly. This, at least, she had considered.
“They were members of a smuggling ring who had stolen valuable antiquities worth millions of dalc. Before I went to the party, I recovered those antiquities and thought I’d made a clean escape.”
Her breath hitched. Her theory that he was involved in organized crime now appeared more likely than ever. Had he been sent by a rival gang? Or was he a hitman hired by the rightful owner of the antiquities? A jack-of-all-trades who performed odd jobs like asset retrieval on top of assassinations?
“The injuries I’ve come home with before,” she said suddenly. “Like the time I said I jammed my hands in a fire door. I made up excuses. I didn’t get hurt from being clumsy at work. Not City Hall, at least.”
“Me neither,” Loid replied. They had fallen into a quicker rhythm, like lobbing a tennis ball back and forth. At normal human speeds. “Concussive therapy isn’t real. That was just a convenient cover for my injuries as well. That night we talked about the fake ‘gripes’ you had with me. I was injured from a mission where I had to fight hand-to-hand with a difficult opponent.”
Mission. It was the first time he had used that word. Mission, not job. That implied he was not on contract like she was. The nature of his work and his organization might be quite different from hers.
“That business trip I took on the Lorelei. The reason I couldn’t see you and Anya for the first two days. It wasn’t about wining and dining potential developers. I wasn’t injured by the VIPs getting into a spat. I was fighting hand-to-hand with difficult opponents, too. A lot of them.”
His blue eyes flickered with something akin to concern and remorse. She remembered her own worry that Loid would notice her swollen cheek and other wounds, and that he wouldn’t buy her excuses. She had been relieved when he’d let it pass like all the others. But at the same time, a tiny part of her had wished for a moment that he would have pressed on the matter. After such a close brush with death, she had longed so badly for someone to understand and accept her, with all the sacrifices she’d made in the shadows.
“I adopted Anya for the purposes of a mission. A high priority, long-term, deep cover mission. I married you to make my cover more realistic. I’m sorry I’ve been using you both.” His voice grew measured and thick at the end.
So then, he hadn’t harmed Anya. Not outright, not maliciously, at least.
She forged on, knowing both of them were close to revealing their final truths.
“I married you for my cover as well, in a way. So that the SSS wouldn’t find me suspicious and look into my nighttime work.”
Loid’s gaze changed once again, this time with the clarity of recognition. That brilliant mind of his that so often outpaced every other person in the room seemed to slow down with deliberate focus, so that he wouldn’t miss a single second of what would happen next.
“Yor, are you…”
“Loid, are you…”
“An assassin?”
“A spy for the West?”
They were still holding hands, their palms uncomfortably sweaty, but neither of them let go. Even as her heart pounded and her fight-or-flight instinct reared up, she leaned forward and placed her other hand on top of his. A test of the commitment she had made, to forgive and understand no matter what. It held.
“What do they call you?” she whispered, as if they were hiding from the authorities in plain sight, amidst the illusion of safety of their upper middle class apartment.
“The Man of a Thousand Faces.”
Yor realized it as his throat bobbed, fighting instinctively to keep his last, most damning secret. Then he let it free, confirming what she already knew.
“...Twilight.”
She moved her hand to his face, caressing soft skin and the faint shadow of stubble on his jaw. He was not wearing a mask. He never had, around her.
“And you?” he whispered.
She withdrew her hands from his hold. For a brief moment he reached for her, as if afraid she had changed her mind. But then he saw what she was doing.
She held out her two earrings for him to inspect. The earrings she wore every day, which he had once complimented as elegant and unique.
“These are my weapons,” she said softly, and awareness dawned on his handsome features.
“Thorn Princess,” he breathed. “They were there the whole time. A dead giveaway.”
She allowed herself one smug smile before she leaned in and kissed him.
Committed. Devoted. Eyes now fully open, but not looking away. She was not running.
She was crashing. Straight into him, against the strength of his arms, the desperation of his embrace. He kissed her back just as fiercely, his hands tangling almost painfully in her hair.
“I did it for my brother,” she said between feverish kisses. He cradled her in his lap, her knees bracketing his hips. “We were starving, and I had nowhere to go. Garden took me in and trained me. Gave me a steady income. I’ve only ever gone after the worst criminals.”
“I lost everyone I loved in the war. WISE recruited me from the battlefield. I do it so that…” His hands trembled against her frame, in disbelief and reverence. A man taking one blind step after another in the dark. “So that no child will ever have to suffer like I did.”
“I thought about quitting, after I met you and Anya. I didn’t see a point to it anymore, but then…then I wanted to protect you both with all my strength. So I kept going.”
“I took this mission in complete ignorance of how having a family would change things. How it would change me. I never want to leave you and Anya. Whether my mission succeeds or fails.”
“I won’t let them take you from us. They can’t. They won’t.”
“My mission is to prevent another war. To get close to the former PM and stop him if he plans to throw our countries back into conflict. That’s why I needed Anya to go to Eden, where his children attend.”
“I’ll help you. You’re not in this alone.”
“My superior. She knows I’m compromised. She knows I planned to come clean with you. But the rest of my agency doesn’t. We don’t have a plan yet, for what happens now.”
“My superior doesn’t know anything. They don’t ask a lot of questions. We operate mainly on trust. But they will ask questions, once I tell them about you. There’s enough trust for them to hear me out. To hear you out, too, since we’re not at odds. We both want peace.”
“Yor…can we actually do this? Can we make this work?”
He had never sounded so vulnerable and uncertain. He pulled back from her needy grasp and looked into her eyes. She knew he had never worn a mask around her, but now she saw him fully, deeply unmasked.
“Yes, we can. We will. Trust me, my love.” The endearment slipped so easily from her lips, an accidental, pure truth.
She saw him waver, fighting the pull of logic and precedent and the deep-rooted fear she now knew lay beneath his perfectionism.
“I do,” he said at last, and she pulled him the rest of the way toward her. Their lips met again, soft and steady with promise.
—
They awoke to the early rays of sunlight slanting through the living room windows, warming the leather of the cushions around them. She shifted against her husband’s hold, her skin peeling away from the couch with a slight sting. The sound roused him, and he blinked away sleep to see that she was still wrapped loosely in his arms, after a night of rapidly unveiled truths.
Loid would have been displeased at the thought of her getting poor sleep in such a cramped position. Twilight was probably even more displeased at the vulnerable opening they’d afforded any potential intruders, far from their fortified bedrooms where their weapons lay. But in the pale light of dawn, the man she saw was not quite either of them. A third man, one without a name, perhaps, who simply gazed upon her and smiled. He kissed her forehead, and she relished the softness of his lips, brushing against her skin without hurry.
“Papa! Mama!” Anya burst out of her room and into the common area, tailed by a sleepy Bond. She skidded to a halt beside them, almost tripping over the oversized pant legs of her pajamas. Her eyes lit up at the sight of them tangled together on the couch. She jumped up and down and cheered even before Yor had the time to blush and stutter. “Papa and Mama are okay! Everything is okay!”
“Anya, what are you talking about? Nothing was ever wrong,” Loid said with a tired smile.
Anya gave him the most skeptical look she had ever mustered. Another expression she had inherited from him.
“Come here, sweetie,” Yor said, and disentangled herself from Loid enough to reach for their daughter. Anya hopped onto the couch and snuggled between them, while Bond nuzzled their legs.
The little girl glanced at her mother and father with sudden shyness, but soon furrowed her brow in determination, as if embarking on her own personal mission. She looked absolutely adorable.
“Mama, Papa. Anya has a secret to share, too,” she declared.
Yor smiled fondly down at the girl, even as she wondered how Anya had intuited that her parents had had a night of honest conversation. Perhaps the fact they’d slept on the couch together had given it away.
“Your secret will be safe with us, Anya,” she promised, and Loid added his support with a gentle ruffle of their daughter’s hair. “What is it?”