“Spider,” Mei announces, entirely without warning, the moment Wren steps outside the next morning.
Wren freezes mid stretch.
“Where.”
“Nowhere.
I just wanted to see you flinch again.” Mei doesn’t even look up from the basket she’s sorting, smug as a cat that’s gotten into the cream and has no intention of apologizing for it.
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“It’s mildly funny at best,” Wren concedes, because she’s nothing if not fair, even under duress, and goes back to her stretching while privately vowing revenge in some form or another, to be determined later.
The teasing does not stop there.
Over the following days, “spider” becomes Mei’s all purpose weapon of choice, deployed any time Wren so much as glances toward the gate, any time Casimir’s name comes up in conversation, any time Wren does something as mundane as fold a blanket with slightly too much focus.
“There’s definitely a spider somewhere near you today,” Mei says, entirely straight faced, watching Wren attempt to casually sweep the doorway for the third time in ten minutes.
“I’m just tidying.”
“You’ve swept that same three feet of dirt into a slightly different pile twice now.”
“It needed doing twice.”
“Sure,” Mei says, in the exact tone of someone who does not believe a single word of that and is enjoying herself immensely regardless.
Here’s the thing Wren would never admit out loud, not even under torture, not even to a chicken: she used to be extremely good at talking.
Six years of narrating her own life to a camera does that to a person, builds a kind of fearless, easy patter that survives collapsed shelters and hostile wildlife and, in one memorable incident, a very aggressive swarm of bees.
Words have never been the problem.
Except now, somehow, around one specific prince, they’ve started tripping over themselves like they’ve forgotten their entire job description.
“You’re holding the hoe wrong,” she tells Casimir that evening, watching him work the third bed with perfectly reasonable form.
He pauses.
“Am I.”
“Grip’s too tight.
You’ll wear yourself out faster.
Also the angle’s slightly off, you want more downward force, less sideways drag, and you should probably switch hands every so often so you don’t overwork one side, and also make sure you’re bending your knees, not your back, or you’ll be sore tomorrow, and also—”
“Wren.”
“What.”
“I’ve been using this hoe correctly for two weeks.” Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“I know that,” she says, entirely too fast.
“I was just.
Reviewing.
For safety.”
He looks at her for a long moment, something amused and faintly bewildered flickering behind his careful composure, and she realizes, with mounting horror, that she has just delivered an entirely unnecessary safety briefing about a garden tool to a grown man perfectly capable of using it, purely because standing near him lately makes her brain short circuit in ways it never used to.
“Noted,” he says gravely.
“I’ll be sure to bend my knees.”
“Good.
Great.
Very important.” She turns away fast, busying her hands with something, anything, that doesn’t involve looking at him, and does not miss the small, private smile he’s failing to hide as she goes.
He’s started finding reasons to come by outside the usual thatching schedule, which Mei has begun tracking with the diligence of a scholar compiling important research.
“That’s the third time this week he’s shown up with an official reason that isn’t actually a reason,” she reports, watching Casimir approach the gate with a scroll tucked under one arm, expression carefully neutral in the specific way that means he’s rehearsed his excuse on the walk over.
“He’s delivering a report,” Wren says.
“He’s delivering a report about the well.
The well he already inspected two days ago.
The well that hasn’t changed at all since he last inspected it.”
“Wells can develop new information.”
“Wells cannot develop new information, Wren, that’s not how wells work,” Mei says, delighted, already keeping what appears to be a mental tally on her fingers.
“This is four.
I’m counting.”
“You’re not counting anything.”
“I am absolutely counting.”
Casimir arrives at the gate, delivers his entirely unnecessary well related update with the grave seriousness of a man briefing a war council, and Wren accepts it with equal seriousness, both of them apparently committed to pretending this is a normal, businesslike exchange between two adults who definitely do not have any other reason to be standing this close together in the fading afternoon light.
“Well,” Wren says, when the fake report’s been fully, thoroughly delivered.
“Since you’re here.”
“Since I’m here.”
“Might as well help with the fence repair. This story is hosted at g.com.
Since you’re here.
Not because I wanted you here specifically.
Purely logistical.”
“Purely logistical,” he agrees, entirely too solemn about it, and follows her toward the fence line where one post has started leaning again, stubbornly refusing to stay upright despite their best efforts.
They end up crouched together at the base of it, both reaching for the same length of rope at the same moment, hands landing on top of each other before either quite registers it happening.
Neither pulls away right away.
The moment stretches, quiet and warm, the fading light doing something unfairly generous to the line of his jaw, and Wren finds herself, for possibly the first time in either lifetime, genuinely, completely at a loss for words.
“Wren,” he says, low, and something in the way he says it feels like the start of an entirely different sentence than the one about the fence post.
“There’s someone at the gate!” Tan’s voice arrives before he does, breathless, sprinting the last few steps with the panicked energy of someone who ran the entire way here.
“Sorry, I need, sorry, this is urgent.”
They spring apart fast enough that Wren nearly loses her balance entirely, and Casimir’s back on his feet a beat later, composure snapping back into place like a mask he’s had a lot of practice putting on quickly.
“What’s happened,” he says, all business now.
Tan doubles over, catching his breath, and delivers the news in short, urgent bursts.
“The Dowager’s steward.
Asking questions.
About your schedule, my prince.
Where you go in the evenings.
Someone’s noticed the pattern.”
The warmth of a second ago drains out of the air instantly, replaced by something colder and far more familiar, the sharp, focused alertness of two people who know exactly how much danger a few careless questions can carry.
“How much do they know,” Wren asks.
“I don’t know,” Tan admits.
“But it’s more than nothing.
And it’s getting worse by the day.”
Wren looks at Casimir, at the fence post still leaning between them, at whatever almost happened a minute ago now shelved indefinitely under the much more pressing problem of not getting either of them killed.
“Right,” she says, exhaling hard.
“Cover story.
We need one, and we need it fast.”