The day after the fire in Prest, we found out that it had been an industrial sector that the Vigilant had burned to the ground. The Flauns soldiers were able to quell the small group that had caused the chaos, but the Prest people were still on edge after such a close hit.

Perhaps anticipating more refugees after such an attack, the Lephards left me largely alone after breakfast. Martin left for his office, and Hannabella kept to her study where she talked on the telephone and wrote letters.

Since the weather had warmed enough to tolerate being outdoors, I sat out on one of the balconies that overlooked the road. It was barely large enough to fit a chair onto, but I liked the cozy nearness. Hannabella had a large collection of amusing novels, and I'd picked one about a family living on an island. I spent a few hours flipping the pages, basking in the sunshine and trying to forget about the fear from the night before.

The sun was warm and I began to drift into sleep. I'd barely slept last night, instead sitting up by the fire in the sitting room while Hannabella dozed beside me on the sofa. Exhaustion weighed heavy on me now, and the pleasant weather only made sleep even more tempting. My thoughts drifted into the cloudy state between sleep and wakefulness, but were soon scattered by the sound of a carriage pulling up below my balcony. I blinked my eyes open, staring at the blue sky for a moment while listening to the horses' hooves striking the cobblestones, the creak of leather, the murmur of voices while the passenger directed the driver. The carriage door opened and closed, and someone's shoes crunched on the sidewalk.

I waited for the thud of knocking on the front door, wondering if it was yet another board member come to discuss refugee rations with Hannabella, but was surprised into a start when a voice broke my silence.

"Nadia! Is that you?"

My heart soared and I surged to my feet. The book and my blanket tumbled to the floor, and I tripped over them as I leaned against the balcony's rail to see Ferdinand smiling up at me from the sidewalk below.

"Ferdinand!" I felt filled with spring flowers absorbing the sun. He raised a hand and waved, and it was if all those empty hours had disappeared in an instant. "Hold on, I'll come down."

"No, wait there!" Ferdinand said, grinning as he grabbed the edge of the ivy growing by the door. Before I could even process what he was doing, he'd stepped up onto the thick vine beneath the foliage, and hoisted himself high enough to grab the bottom of the balcony. Within a few seconds, he'd gripped the iron railing, pulled himself up, and climbed over, landing just a few inches from me.

I laughed, holding my hands up. "What in the world? You could have broken your neck!"

He grabbed my waist, hoisting me up so he could crush me with his embrace. I yelped playfully, trying to get him to release his tight grip, but then he drowned me in kisses, smothering my mock protestations until I kissed him back. He let me down, but his lips still met mine, filling me up with all that we had missed over the night. His hands ran down my hair and then shoulders and waist, where he pulled me close. I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time, desperate to remember what his arms and chest felt like even after only one night apart.

When we finally needed to breathe again, we broke apart and Ferdinand laughed as he smoothed my hair away from my face. "I think I ruined your hairstyle," he murmured, his lips red from the force of our kisses.

I cleared my throat, looking toward the ground and reaching up to feel the braids I'd arranged this morning had fallen down around my shoulders. Embarrassment suddenly flooded me and I spun away from him, covering my face with my hands.

"What are you hiding from," Ferdinand asked, poking my side and making me squirm despite myself.

"Don't tease!" I begged, pushing my hair back and still refusing to look at him. "What if all the neighbors saw that?"

"What? A few harmless kisses? I'd think they'd be jealous."

I finally turned to look at him, hoping to give him a withering glare, but instead being caught back into a kiss. I tasted his breath, sweet and warm, and let him hold me as I leaned into his chest. I knew we shouldn't be so close, not when we were back in society and so closely monitored in the house of a celebrity. But for just those few seconds, I could forget the Flaunsian people and remember only the days we'd spent in our own apartment in Rumonin, right before everything had changed and gone to ruin.

A passing horse on the street below startled us back to reality, and I pulled away and swept into the room before I betrayed myself and went further than I should. Ferdinand followed me, his cheeks and neck flushed red and his hands nervously running through his hair. I retreated to a mirror on the vanity to fix my own hair, pinning it back into place.

"I missed you," Ferdinand said, sitting on the edge of the bed behind me. He stared at me through the mirror, a sadness in the tilt of his eyebrows.

"I did too," I whispered, leaning back in the chair. I held his hand, remembering just how perfectly our fingers fit between the other's, and then quickly got to my feet before I found myself kissing him again.

"Let's go down to the sitting room. Martin will be coming home for lunch soon, and I'm sure he'd love to see you." I led him out of the upstairs bedroom and down to the sitting room. He sat on a chair while I poured him a glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the table. I still wasn't comfortable with summoning the servants to do my bidding, so I asked them in the mornings at breakfast to leave me a pitcher of a cool drink for me to use throughout the day. I had suspicions that they refreshed it every so often, for it rarely came close to being empty. I handed Ferdinand his glass, but he took one sip out of it and placed it on a side table.

"Come here," he said, grabbing my waist as I walked by him and pulling me onto his lap. I yelped and playfully smacked his shoulder as I lost my balance and fell into him. He grinned and pinned my arms. "I want to look at you. Stop squirming!"

"Never," I said, sticking my nose up in the air before wiggling in his grasp until he had to let my arms go. I didn't get up, though. Leaning into his chest, one of his arms around my back and the other resting on my knees that lay across his legs, made my heart soften. He ran his fingers in small circles on my back and I closed my eyes, imagining that we had all the time in the world.

Ferdinand shifted and I opened my eyes again to see him looking at me. "How were you when I was gone?"

I sat up. "It was frightening, but I managed," I said. I didn't want to let him know how hard it had been, or how much I'd wanted to run back to the LeClaire's and reclaim him.

"Well, I hated it," he said, his lips puckering.

I giggled. "You couldn't even last one night without me?" I kissed his cheek.

Ferdinand shook his head, more serious than I'd thought. "It was horrible. I never want to do it again."

Despite myself, my heart leapt in my chest. "Do you want to come back here?"

Ferdinand sighed. "I don't know. My family is beside themselves with getting me back. I feel terrible leaving them again, right after they found out that I'm alive." His hands shook, but he clasped them tightly to try and hide it from me.

I could understand. I'd spent weeks in Rumonin thinking he was dead in one of the corpse piles that lined the roads. The pain of losing him again each time I found him had felt like my chest ripping in two, and the fear that it might happen again never quite left me. His mother must feel similarly. She had thought her beautiful boy torn to pieces in the city that had become hell, and then he'd shown up on her doorstep. I'm sure she noticed his depleted state and the hollowness that never quite left his eyes. She must be worried sick, and taking him away from her felt cruel.

"Maybe..." I began, my voice so quiet I wasn't even sure if he'd heard me. I cleared it, about to repeat myself, when the door to the sitting room opened and Martin rushed in.

His hair stuck up in wild angles as he raked his hand through it. I merely watched as he walked directly to his liquor cart, picked up a glass, sighed, placed it back down and spun around to face me with a hand over his mouth. His suit coat hung open and his sleeves unbuttoned, like he'd taken a nap and not realized that he hadn't set himself back to rights. Something about him vibrated, like a horse right before a race.

"Is something the matter, Martin?" I asked. He hadn't even noticed Ferdinand yet.

"Well, Nadia, not exactly." He finally glanced in Ferdinand's direction, his eyes going wide. "Oh! When did you get here? How was the LeClaire's?"

"It was fine, thank you," Ferdinand said, with an uneasy smile. "But what's going on? I don't think I've ever seen someone so out of sorts."

Martin gave a breathy laugh. "I had to rush home as soon as I received it. I forgot to lock my office door and I think I may have run over a rubbish bin on my way here, but it was so important..."

"What, Martin?" I demanded, getting to my feet and crossing the room to take his hands. They were cold and shaking, but his lips curved up at the corners. He searched my face, as if looking for some sort of answer or approval, but I had no idea what kind to give him.

"I don't want to tell you without Hannabella here. She'll kill me if I tell you without her there." He gripped my hands tightly, pulling me with him as he dragged us toward the hallway and Hannabella's office in the back of the house. "It's shocking. I honestly didn't expect anything to come of it, and certainly not as quickly as it did. It's impossible, really." He looked back at me, his smile now spread across his face. He reached out, turning Hannabella's office handle. "But, after all that's happened, perhaps we're due one small miracle."