Their quarters are too far, and too many stairs, away. So they do not make it so far. Rather, Lakshmi had pooled all the house guards to the hall when she knew the trouble would start from less important places.

But it means now, the library is empty. Small and intimate. The great walls of books like a buffer of sound. She locks the door behind them, occupied with that before she feels the tug.

And with it, everything else falls away, the fear and relief and longing on her face that had been kept hidden bubble over, desperately reach back for Magni. Properly this time. "They said I had lost you," how she whispers it, like she didn't even want to say it. "but I knew I hadn't. I knew you would not go and not come back to me, first."

Like such simple promises could be want changed fate. Maybe they were. Maybe right now, they were the only thing that mattered. Her face twists up in the pain of it and arms wrap around her.