Chapter 83: Tricky Proposition
The apartment wrapped around them like a familiar skin, smelling of lemon verbena from the diffuser and the faint, ever-present ghost of espresso from below. Their conversation from the stairwell still hummed in the air, unspoken, as they hung coats and kicked off shoes.
A soft whine cut through the quiet.Hans, their Airedale, emerged from his bed in the corner. His stumpy legs carried him across the floorboards with a purposeful tap-tap, his wiry brown-and-black fur rumpled from sleep. He didn’t bark—he’d learned that wasn’t necessary in the late-night returns of his people—but his entire body wiggled with restrained accusation.
“Oh, my neglected boy,” Yvonne murmured, her voice softening into a register reserved for plants and dogs. She sank to her knees, her floral skirt pooling around her. Hans immediately shoved his snout into her chest, inhaling deeply the scents of the outside world she’d brought in: market food, night air, the faint, unfamiliar perfume that clung to her jacket.
Victoria watched, a fond ache in her chest. This was her other foundation: Yvonne’s instinctive gentleness, the dog’s uncomplicated devotion. She crouched down too, scratching the coarse hair behind Hans’s ears.“We left you to guard the empire,” she told him. “A vital job.No break-ins, see? All is secure.”
Hans licked her wrist, a quick, salty swipe, then returned his attention to Yvonne, leaning his full weight against her as if to tip her over.
Yvonne laughed, a sound that dissipated the last of the evening’s residual charge. “He’s saying we were gone too long and the treats were insufficient.”
“A clear contractual breach,” Victoria agreed, pushing herself up. She went to the kitchenette and retrieved a dog biscuit from the tin. Hans’s attention snapped to her, his earlier slight forgotten in the crunch of the cookie.
With the dog pacified, the room settled back into a deeper quiet. The only sounds were Hans’s contented chewing and the distant, liquid rumble of a tram on Gneisenaustraße. Yvonne remained on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, her glasses catching the low light from the bedside lamp.
Victoria poured two glasses of water from the carafe on the counter, the ice cracking softly. She handed one to Yvonne and sat beside her on the rug, their shoulders touching. The physical reconnection was simple, automatic.“So,” Yvonne said after a long sip, staring into her water. “Laura.”
“Laura,” Victoria echoed, the name now a container for so much: the soaring melody, the searing lyrics, the grip of her arm around Victoria’s waist in the cold.
“You pulled away on the walk. Because you needed to think.” Yvonne’s statement was gentle, not an accusation. “What did you think?”
Victoria swirled her water, watching the vortex.“I thought she’s like a theorem that only works under specific, unstable conditions. Brilliant, but… fractal.Endlessly complex and prone to collapse.”
Yvonne smiled faintly. “My poet.”
“And,” Victoria continued, the words forming as she spoke them, “I thought it’s hard not to see the appeal. Objectively.” She glanced at Yvonne, testing the waters.“That wild spirit.That certainty in her own chaos. The way she crafts beauty from her own mess.It’s… captivating.A beautiful, creative force. It’s easy to imagine getting hooked.”
She stopped herself, realizing the direction of her own analysis. It sounded like admiration.It sounded like attraction. She braced for a flicker of jealousy, a tightening in Yvonne’s posture.Instead, Yvonne let out a long, slow breath. She took off her thick red glasses, polished them on the hem of her skirt, and blinked her myopic, beautiful eyes.Without the lenses, her gaze was soft, unfocused, and utterly direct.
“I find her very appealing, too,” Yvonne said, the admission landing in the quiet room with the weight of a simple truth.“Attractive, even.The way she moves. The sharp, knowing look in her eyes behind those ridiculous glasses. The confidence.”
Victoria’s breath caught.This was new ground. They had joked about crushes before, pointed out attractive people in films or on the street with the safe detachment of a shared aesthetic appreciation.This was not detached. This was about a woman who had written them a love song and then clung to them for warmth.
“You’re not… upset?” Victoria asked, her voice lower.
Yvonne put her glasses back on, the world snapping into sharp focus for her again.“Upset?No. Surprised… a little.By the intensity of it.” She leaned her head back against the sofa. “She’s a shock to the system.Like a hard rain after a long drought. It wakes everything up.”
Hans finished his biscuit and came to slump heavily across both their laps, a warm, living barrier and connection.They both scratched his sides absently.
“She sees us,” Yvonne continued, her voice thoughtful.“Not just the café, or the happy married couple. She sees the spaces.The quiet moments between us where a third person might… fit. She sang about it. And then she stepped into one of those spaces tonight on that street.” Her fingers stilled on Hans’s fur.“It felt… not wrong. That’s what’s unnerving.”
Victoria absorbed this. The structural analyst in her mapped the load-bearing walls of their relationship, searching for cracks.She found none. Instead, she found a strange, new architectural possibility—an expansion she hadn’t considered.“It felt like a choice was being presented. Not by her, necessarily. But by… the situation.”
“A choice we don’t have to make tonight,” Yvonne said firmly, her practicality reasserting itself. She nudged Victoria with her shoulder.“Or maybe ever.She is a visitor, remember?She might get bored. She might write a song about us and move on to the next inspiration in Hamburg.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” The question hung in the air, as tangible as the dog’s weight on their legs.Yvonne looked at her, her gaze clear and unwavering.“Then we talk. We talk more than we have ever talked about anything.You and me. First, last, and always.” She reached over, her strong, capable hand finding Victoria’s.“Our foundation, Victoria. It’s not just sound.It’s adaptable. We built it that way.”
“Adaptable.” Victoria repeated the word, tasting its implications. It felt different than “open.” It suggested intention, design. Hans heaved a sigh in his sleep, his paws twitching. The familiar weight of him was an anchor. “So we adapt. Cautiously.”
She disentangled her hand from Yvonne’s to take a sip of water, the cool liquid a shock. “We need data,” she said, her consultant’s pragmatism slotting into place around the chaotic feelings. “Not just the charged group dynamic. Not just her performance. We need to see her interact without the… triangulation.”
Yvonne tilted her head, her dreadlocks brushing the sofa cushion. “You mean, one of us alone with her.”
“Yes.” The word was a clean, sharp line in the cozy room. “Controlled conditions. A defined setting. To observe.”
A faint smile touched Yvonne’s lips. “Observe what, exactly?”
“Everything.” Victoria set her glass down with a definitive click. “How she speaks about the other one who isn’t there. Where her eyes go. If the… proposal in the song extends to a unit of one, or if it’s specifically about the pair. The chemistry of us.” She ran a hand through her short hair. “It removes the safety of the group. It makes the intention clear, or exposes a lack of it.”
Yvonne was quiet for a long moment, her fingers tracing the pattern on the worn rug. The hum of the quiet apartment was a physical thing. “It feels a bit like sending out a scout,” she said finally. “Or setting bait.”
“It’s an invitation,” Victoria corrected, though the distinction felt thin. “A clear, kind, solitary invitation. No ambiguity. Just coffee, or a walk in the park. Something utterly normal.”
“And the other one just… waits.”
“Yes.” Victoria met her wife’s gaze. The rule formed as she spoke it. “The other one waits. No hovering. No debrief until it’s completely over. We go in with a hypothesis, we gather the experience, and we reconvene after. As a united front. No secrets.”
Yvonne absorbed this, her practical mind turning over the mechanics. “And who goes first?”
That was the real question. Victoria exhaled. “Logistically, you see her more. She comes to the café. The opportunity arises naturally.”
“But you’re the one she sang the song to, in a way,” Yvonne countered softly. “The ‘sharp, clean goodbye’ expert. The one who pulled away on the walk. Your dynamic is… charged with a different kind of history.”
They sat with that truth. The cold street, the shared warmth, Victoria’s retreat—it had been a conversation between her and Laura as much as between the three of them.
“Flip a coin?” Victoria suggested, a weak attempt at levity.
Yvonne shook her head, her expression settling into resolve. “No. You should go first.” She said it gently. “Your need for data is more acute. Your mind will pick apart the details mine might just… feel. You’ll come back with a spreadsheet of her micro-expressions.” A real smile, warm and wry, finally broke through. “I’ll come back with a description of her laugh and whether she was kind to a stranger.”
Victoria felt a surge of profound gratitude for this woman, for their contrasting, complementary chemistries. “The rules stand,” she affirmed. “A public place. A defined end time. No pressure beyond conversation.”
“And we trust each other,” Yvonne added, the bedrock beneath it all. “Completely. Whatever… data is gathered.”
They sat in the pool of lamplight, the plan now a tangible object between them. It was a pathway forward through the uncharted territory, a way to transform the swirling, poetic tension into something they could hold, examine, and decide upon. The unknown stretched ahead, but they had drawn a map of their own making.
“Alright,” Victoria said, the word a commitment. She looked toward the window, toward the sleeping square and the apartment above. “I’ll ask her for a drink. This week.”
This week.”
The days that followed were a study in heightened awareness. The morning sun through the café’s front windows seemed to illuminate dust motes with unusual clarity. The hiss of the espresso machine was a percussive beat to which Yvonne moved with focused grace. Victoria, working remotely from her usual corner table, found the figures on her sustainability reports blurring as her attention repeatedly snagged on the front door’s bell.
Every chime was a potential arrival. It was only ever Vita, bursting in with chatter about a new Berlin band, or Joost, complaining about his bike chain with theatrical solemnity. Laura did not appear.
The absence became its own presence. It hummed in the space between Yvonne’s glance toward the staircase and Victoria’s pause mid-sentence when footsteps sounded overhead. Their agreed-upon plan felt like a pebble held in a closed palm, smooth and growing warm with anticipation.
“Perhaps she’s working a modelling job,” Yvonne mused on Tuesday evening, her hands wrist-deep in soil as she divided a sprawling spider plant on their kitchen table. Fragrant, damp earth scent filled the room. “Or she’s composing. Hibernating.”
“Or avoiding,” Victoria said from the sofa, her laptop casting a blue glow on her face. She didn’t look up.
“Why would she avoid?”
“Because she said too much.” Victoria closed her laptop with a soft click. “The song, the grappa-fueled confession, the… clutching. It was a volley. Now she’s waiting to see if we return it. Or if we let it drop.”
Yvonne carefully settled a new plant into a terracotta pot, tamping the soil with deliberate care. “We are not letting it drop.”
“No.” Victoria’s voice was quiet, certain. “We are not.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the opportunity presented itself with a softness that felt conspiratorial.
The lunch rush at Café Klee had dissipated, leaving behind a tranquil haze of sunbeams and the quiet clatter of Joost clearing tables. Yvonne was in the new garden room, her voice a low murmur as she walked an elderly regular through the steps of potting a succulent cutting. Victoria was finishing a call, her professional cadence a sharp contrast to the café’s lingering calm.
The front door bell chimed, not with Vita’s energetic bang but with a hesitant, single note.
Laura stood just inside, backlit by the spring sun. She looked less like a stage creature and more like someone who had forgotten to sleep. Her white-blue hair was tucked under a faded black beanie. Her usual stark makeup was absent, leaving her pale face looking younger, more exposed. She wore large round glasses and a bulky knit sweater that swallowed her frame.
She hovered near the door, as if uncertain of her welcome.
Victoria’s pulse gave a single, hard knock against her ribs. She ended her call, stood, and smoothed her sweater. Her movement caught Laura’s eye. For a suspended second, they looked at each other across the empty café—Victoria by the window, Laura by the door, a chessboard of sunlight and shadow between them.
Laura moved first, drifting not toward the counter but toward Victoria’s table. Her boots were silent on the wooden floor.
“Hey,” she said, her voice slightly rough.
“Hey.” Victoria gestured to the vacant chair opposite. “You look like you’ve been wrestling your muse all night.”
A faint, grateful smile touched Laura’s lips. She slid into the chair, dropping her canvas bag on the floor. “Losing, mostly. The muse is agile. And cruel.” She rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses. “I came down for caffeine and human-shaped noise. The silence upstairs is… loud.”
“I know that kind of silence,” Victoria said. It was an easy truth, a point of connection. “It has teeth.” She watched as Laura’s gaze flickered toward the garden room doorway, where Yvonne’s laugh echoed softly.
“Yvonne’s running a workshop,” Victoria offered, following her look.
“She’s good at that. Making things grow.” Laura’s attention returned to Victoria. The directness was still there, but softened by weariness. “You’re working.”
“Just finished. My brain is full of retrofit schematics and carbon offset equations.” Victoria made a show of rubbing her temple. “It needs to be scoured out. With something stronger than coffee.”
She let the statement hang. This was the moment. She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping into a more personal register. “I was actually about to go stir crazy in here. I need a proper drink. Somewhere that doesn’t smell of cinnamon and milk foam.” She tilted her head, her invitation casual, the edges deliberately soft. “Would you be interested in unwinding? I know a quiet Weinbar in Mitte. No market crowds this time.”
Laura’s pale blue eyes widened a fraction behind her lenses. She absorbed the question, the specific solitude of it. Her thumb traced a scratch on the wooden table. “Just you?”
“Just me,” Victoria affirmed, her tone light. “Yvonne has a date with a philodendron that’s trying to conquer the living room. Repotting emergency. She’ll be up to her elbows in soil all evening.” She offered a conspiratorial smile. “A mess I’m wisely avoiding.”
The excuse was perfect. It was domestic, true to Yvonne’s nature, and it implicitly gave space. It carried, as intended, the clear scent of trust.
Laura’s shoulders lost a tension Victoria hadn’t fully registered they were holding. That vulnerable, post-performance openness from the market hall resurfaced on her face, stripped of its earlier fear. This was a direct line, not a triangulation.
“A quiet Weinbar sounds…” Laura searched for the word. “Human. Yes. I would like that very much.”
“Good.” Victoria stood, gathering her laptop and jacket. The action felt decisive, a first move made. “Give me ten minutes to shut things down upstairs. Meet you out front?”
Laura nodded, a new energy seeming to animate her. She stood as well, heading toward the counter where Joost was polishing cups. “I’ll get a coffee to go. For the walk to the U-Bahn.”
Victoria moved toward the back staircase, her senses sharp. She could hear the gentle drone of Yvonne’s workshop lesson. As she passed the open garden room door, she caught her wife’s eye. Yvonne was holding a small terracotta pot, her fingers earthy. Victoria didn’t break stride, but she gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Yvonne’s response was a slow blink, a subtle softening around her eyes. She understood. The plan was in motion. Then she turned back to her student, her voice resuming its patient, grounding rhythm. “Now, you see these roots? They’re crowded. They need room to breathe, just like us.”
The trust was absolute. It was a solid, warm stone in Victoria’s pocket as she took the stairs two at a time, the momentum of the uncharted evening pulling her forward.
It was a solid, warm stone in Victoria’s pocket as she took the stairs two at a time, the momentum of the uncharted evening pulling her forward. She changed quickly in the apartment, swapping her smart trousers for dark jeans, her sweater for a softer, navy merino crewneck. She paused, her hand hovering over her jewelry box. She selected simple silver studs, not the statement pieces she wore for client meetings. This was not a client meeting. She brushed a hand over her shaved undercut, the bristle familiar and grounding. A glance in the mirror: her glasses, her own sharp face looking back. Ready.
Downstairs, the café was empty save for Joost wiping down the machine. He gave her a slow, knowing nod. Victoria pushed the heavy green door open, the bell clanging softly above her.
Laura was waiting on the cobblestones, leaning against the sun-warmed brick facade of the building. She had finished her coffee, the empty compostable cup held loosely in her fingers. The late afternoon light caught the blue tips of her hair, making them glow like gas flame. She’d put on a dark lipstick, a small reclaiming of armor.
“You escaped,” Laura said, pushing off the wall.
“The philodendron is a ruthless captor,” Victoria replied, falling into step beside her. They turned south, away from the square, toward the U-Bahn station. The air held the damp green scent of recent rain on hot pavement. “It’s best not to get between Yvonne and a root-bound plant. Things get… territorial.”
Laura laughed, a short, genuine sound. “Noted. I will never challenge her for potting soil supremacy.”
They walked in comfortable silence for a block, past shuttered shops and the faint thump of bass from a basement record store. The rhythm of their footsteps synced, a casual, unplanned accord. A cyclist zipped past, his basket full of baguettes.
“The U-Bahn smells like a different city every day,” Laura observed as they descended into the subway’s tiled mouth. The air was a blend of damp concrete, faint electrical ozone, and a thousand different perfumes. “Today it’s wet dog and someone’s very optimistic peach gum.”
“Yesterday it was industrial disinfectant and despair,” Victoria said, tapping her transit card. The barriers clattered open. “The day before, frying doner meat. It’s a olfactory broadcast of Berlin’s collective mood.”
On the platform, they stood side-by-side, not touching, watching the graffiti-blurred darkness of the tunnel. The distant rumble grew, a wind pushing ahead of the train.
“Where’s this Weinbar?” Laura asked, raising her voice slightly over the approaching noise.
“A side street near Hackescher Markt. It feels like a cellar someone forgot about. In a good way.”
The train doors hissed open, swallowing them into its bright, noisy belly. They found straps to hold, swaying with the lurch of departure. The carriage was half-full, a tableau of tired faces, headphones, and the relentless glow of phones.
“So, retrofitting old buildings,” Laura said, her eyes scanning the adverts for language schools and concert venues. “That sounds… noble. And frustrating.”
“It’s a symphony of frustration,” Victoria admitted, the motion of the train making the confession easier. “The noble intentions are in the proposal. The reality is arguing with a landlord from 1982 about the thermal efficiency of his single-pane windows. It’s Excel sheets measuring guilt. It’s convincing people that the future is worth more than the comfort of their drafty, familiar past.”
Laura looked at her, a smile playing on her dark lips. “You make it sound so poetic.”
“It’s bureaucratic poetry. The rhymes are in the building codes.”
The train slowed, their reflections shuddering in the dark glass. They changed lines at Hermannplatz in a fluid, wordless exchange, Victoria leading the way through the tiled underpass. The second train was quieter.
“And you?” Victoria asked. “Between wrestling your muse and modelling jobs, what’s the texture of the frustration?”
Laura leaned her head back against the window. “The frustration is the space between the idea and the execution. The song in your head is perfect. The one your fingers find is… flawed. It’s chasing a ghost of a feeling with clumsy tools.” She opened her eyes, looking at Victoria. “Modelling is easier. You just have to be a shape for a few hours. A mannequin with a pulse. The frustration there is passive. It doesn’t have teeth.”
They emerged above ground at Hackescher Markt, the evening sky a deep, clear violet. The tourist crowds were thinning, leaving the maze of courtyards and cobbled lanes to the locals and the lingering light. Victoria led them down a narrow alley, past a silent gallery and a tiny shop selling only buttons.
The Weinbar was exactly as described: a few steps down, a heavy oak door, a curtain of beaded strings. Inside, it was all low vaulted ceilings, stone walls, and the soft golden glow of candlelight reflecting in endless bottles. The air was cool, still, and smelled of decades of spilled wine and polished wood. A few couples murmured in corners. It was the antithesis of the market hall.
They took a small table near the back, a nook formed by a wine barrel and the wall. The server, a woman with a long gray braid, brought them menus and a bowl of marinated olives.
Laura shed her sweater, revealing a simple black tank top, the delicate lines of her collarbones and the swirl of a small, intricate tattoo on her shoulder blade. She looked around, her eyes wide. “This is a place for secrets.”
“Or very quiet conversations,” Victoria agreed. She studied the wine list, the familiar ritual settling her. “The Spätburgunder here is exceptional. Or, if you’re feeling brave, they have a Austrian Blaufränkisch that tastes like crushed violets and rebellion.”
“Rebellion, please,” Laura said without hesitation.
Victoria ordered the Blaufränkisch and, after a moment, a glass of the Spätburgunder for herself. The server melted away.
Alone in the candlelit nook, the reality of the situation crystallized. Victoria felt the old, almost-forgotten synapses fire: the first-date awareness, the careful curation of self, the hyper-observation of the other person’s gestures. She was settled with Yvonne, a year of deep, knitted-together life. But this particular skillset, this dance of discovery, was still in her muscle memory. She could see it in Laura too, in the way she arranged her cutlery, the deliberate eye contact, the slight tilt of her head that was both listening and performing.
“So,” Laura said, plucking an olive from the bowl. “The consultant and the songwriter walk into a wine cellar. It sounds like the start of a joke with a terrible punchline.”
“Or a niche indie film,” Victoria countered, swirling the water in her glass. “Critics would call it ‘atmospheric’ but ‘emotionally elusive.’”
Laura’s laugh was low, pleased. “I’d watch it. The soundtrack would be impeccable.” She ate the olive, then licked the oil from her thumb. A simple, unthinking gesture that felt profoundly intimate in the quiet space. “You mentioned many cities. Before Berlin. Before the… foundation.”
The wine arrived, saving Victoria from an immediate answer. They touched glasses, a soft ping that resonated in the stone hollow.
“Many cities,” Victoria confirmed, taking a sip. The wine was deep, peppery, with that promised floral undertone. “London, of course. Then Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Seattle, Amsterdam. A consultancy passport stamp collection. Each one a self-contained episode. A different apartment with similarly generic furniture. A different set of colleagues to politely disappoint by not joining for after-work drinks.”
“Why not join them?”
“Because the drinks were never the point. The point was networking, or complaining, or filling the silence until it was acceptable to go home to the empty apartment.” Victoria traced the stem of her glass. “I got very good at the quick, clean exit. The art of the Irish goodbye, perfected across continents.”
Laura watched her, her chin resting in her hand. The candlelight danced in her pale eyes. “You made yourself a ghost in every city.”
“I made myself efficient. Unattached. It was a professional necessity.” She met Laura’s gaze. “Until it wasn’t. Until the efficiency felt like emptiness. Until I saw a woman with ginger dreadlocks and flour on her nose talking to a spider plant in a café window, and every algorithm for a clean exit failed.”
A slow smile spread across Laura’s face. “Yvonne.”
“Yvonne,” Victoria affirmed, the name a talisman. “She was… a fixed point. A radically different gravitational model.”
Laura took a long drink of her wine, her throat working. She set the glass down carefully. “I understand fixed points. I’ve just… always been the satellite. My family in Modena is a fixed point, but one I orbit from a very, very great distance. My mother’s voice is a gravity I had to escape.” She picked up another olive, studied it. “Cities for me aren’t episodes. They’re… layers. Rome is a reckless, sun-bleached heartbreak layered under Lyon’s soft, suffocating velvet. Berlin is… sharp graphite and cold air and something else I’m still trying to trace.”
“You don’t sound like you want to escape Berlin’s gravity,” Victoria observed softly.
Laura’s eyes flicked up. “Not currently.” The flirtation was there, a spark in the tinder-dry air of the cellar, but it was veiled in poetry. She didn’t lean in. She didn’t touch. She let the implication hang, a question wrapped in a statement.
They talked more, the wine softening the edges of the conversation. Laura spoke of chaotic modelling castings in Milan, of sleeping on a friend’s floor in Paris after a gig fell through. Victoria shared stories of boardroom battles in Hong Kong, of the surreal loneliness of a five-star hotel room in a city of ten million. It was a dance of parallels and contrasts, each anecdote a carefully placed tile in the mosaic of the other.
The server brought a small plate of crusty bread and creamy butter. Laura broke a piece, the sound crisp.
“And Yvonne,” Laura said, spreading butter with precise concentration. “She doesn’t mind? The past cities, the ghost protocol?” Her tone was light, curious, but the question was a probe directly into the center of things.
Victoria felt the shift. This was no longer about shared histories. This was about the present structure. “She understands the architecture of a previous life,” Victoria said carefully. “She has her own. A failed bakery in Wedding, a grandmother’s expectations. We don’t mind each other’s ghosts. We just make sure they don’t crowd the rooms we’re building now.”
“The garden,” Laura said, almost to herself. She took a bite of bread, chewed, swallowed. “It’s a good metaphor. Tending things. Letting them grow.” She looked directly at Victoria, her gaze unnervingly clear. “Is it a closed garden?”
The question landed with the quiet force of a dropped stone in a still pond. The noise of the bar, the murmur of other conversations, seemed to recede. Here it was, the line they had been circling since the market hall, since the song, since the cold street.
Victoria didn’t look away. She held that pale blue stare, feeling the old analytical part of her brain whirring, assessing the risk, the variables. But a deeper, more visceral part was engaged now. This was beyond data collection.
“It’s a carefully curated garden,” Victoria replied, her voice even. “Not everything that floats in on the wind is allowed to take root. Some things are weeds. Some things are…” She paused, searching for the right word. “… unexpected seedlings. They require observation. To see if they’re compatible with the existing ecosystem. To see what light they need, what space they take, what they might offer in return.”
She had not said yes. She had not said no. She had described a process. An invitation to be observed, considered.
Laura absorbed this, a faint, unreadable smile touching her lips. She leaned back, the candlelight carving shadows under her cheekbones. “Observation,” she repeated. “I can work with that.” She lifted her glass again, her eyes never leaving Victoria’s. “To unexpected seedlings.”