"Careful," I say, leaning into his hand. "Keep talking like that and I'll never get any work done."
"That's the idea." But he says it soft, and then he kisses me, unhurried, the kind of kiss we've earned the right to now, no wall behind it, no fear, just the warmth of two people who chose each other and get, for this one hour in the grass, to simply be glad of it.
When we part, though, the gladness cools, because we both know what sits under all of it.
"There's still the hard part," I say. "A case is just paper until it's in front of the right eyes. We can't mail it to the Council. Cass controls too much, he's the grieving hero, the dutiful cousin, and a stack of evidence from a runaway heir and a human girl and a turncoat crook, they'd dismiss it, or he'd bury it, or the people who del
