“You know it was brilliant,” Jer said. “Stop fishing.”
“I’m allowed,” Cade said. “I didn’t have enough time for a full rehearsal. I do get nervous.”
“It did everything you needed it to do.”
Cadence looked at Peter and Nerein, waiting.
“I agree it’s brilliant,” Peter told him honestly. “It’s not us, though, of course.”
“Inspired by,” Cade said. “It’s not meant to be.”
Jer laughed.
“I loved it,” Nerein said, sure as a distant murmur of ocean, plain as an unruffled expanse of water under light. Straightforward as a clear horizon. “I know it wasn’t precisely us, but it was. It was all of us. Because we all felt it.” He regarded Cade with a not-quite-human head-tip, a quickness of motion. “You are a magician.”
“There’s no such thing, and I’m not,” Cade retorted, though he sounded please
