Inej had returned.

She didn't smell of sea-salt spray, or she didn't smell of sea-salt spray to Nina's nose, which admittedly had dulled a bit since returning to Ravka. Her cottage sat close to the permafrost, firmly within Ravka, but close enough to Fjerda that she got the occasional fanatic stumbling in, looking for vengeance.

Sometimes she could dissuade them; sometimes not. They rarely continued deeper into Ravka, anyway.

They had tried to offer her an army. Well, no; they had tried to press an army upon her, the way a jumped-up new Grisha might try to force her mother to accept help around the house. But when the teeth they carried as tokens began to move, when the dust of the long dead stirred around their feet, they left her alone. And she preferred that - she did! She liked people, but she also needed time to herself, time to be Nina.

But she felt nothing but delight upon embracing Inej. Her eyes sparkled and her hair shone. She kissed Nina with enthusiasm bordering on wildness, her rope-scarred hands rubbing gently over Nina's neck, her lips soft and perfectly eager against Nina's. They stumbled into the cottage together, and Inej pulled away for just long enough to cast a look over the soft hangings around her windows, the pillows and rugs covering the floor. "And here I thought you'd be rusticating."

"I am, can't you tell? I had to haul my own lumber the other day."

Inej laughed, and they were kissing again, sinking into the pillows on the floor of Nina's sitting room. She felt the need building in her as Inej straddled her hips, pressing her down, down into the pillows until all she could do was hold on and try to ride along.

It felt delicious: a little dangerous, a little foolish. Inej would eventually go to Kaz, or she'd stay alone her whole life; she wouldn't settle on a rural farm an age from the sea with someone who could raise the dead. But for now, she seemed willing enough to knock Nina's legs apart, kissing her thighs and stroking her, watching with alert eyes as Nina shook under her attentions.

"Are you lonely?" she said quietly, dipping two fingers between Nina's folds. She felt herself, wet and warm and painfully ready.

"Yes. A bit."

"There's a berth on my ship if you want one."

It struck her as odd, incongruous, but she shook her head and the moment shifted: Inej with two fingers buried in her, Nina crying out from it, riding her hand. "Please, please, harder," she said, and Inej obliged her, smiling a little as she watched Nina fall apart under her touch.

She couldn't come, not quite. She shrugged her robe off and pinched her nipples, desperate for more friction. Inej surged up and tugged her hair, kissed her and guided Nina's hand down to between them.

And, oh, this was perfect, pressing the palm of her hand against Inej and watching her move with it, riding her with delicious abandon. Inej gasped her name, rode her thigh - and then Nina pulled her up and got her mouth on Inej's cunt, licking and sucking until she finally shattered in Nina's arms.

Finally, finally, she was ready. Inej barely got her fingers back inside before Nina came around them, her whole body bowing, almost knocking Inej off her perch. It felt so good, so incredibly good - and then better again when she opened her eyes to see Inej watching her like she couldn't imagine a sight more interesting.

In a long, slow, sleepy moment, Inej began to speak.

Nina woke to the freezing cold. Ice bordered the window above her bed. The shadows on the ceiling seemed to dance. The jurda parem danced in her veins, laughing at her.

It wasn't there. She hadn't, and she wouldn't. But she still felt Inej's fingers on her arm. It had been a dream, and yet it hadn't been, in the same way that the jurda parem had long since left her system and yet lived in her all the same.

She got out of bed and lit a lamp. Outside, she could feel the earth: a dead bird, an old long-slumbering graveyard, a tooth someone had lost on the road many years ago. She felt her own age hanging around her shoulders like a cloak.

She had seen Inej. She would again. The drug might send creeping loneliness through her veins, but here she had light, tea, a place to sleep. And quite a lot of money in the cellar, if it came to that.

The sun came up slowly. They were in the darker days now, with the worst of the cold yet to come. While the light was still good, she drafted a letter. If she sent it south, Inej would eventually receive it. She wrote of her cottage and the semi-military mission Ravka had given her to carry out. She wrote of deprogramming the Fjerdan fools, and of hope. And then, after hesitating for so long she managed to embarrass herself: I hope to see you soon. I dreamed of you. The contents of the dream aren't worth reviewing, but the important part is that you were in it. There. That sounded almost practical, not like something jurda parem had driven her to say.

She sealed the letter and set it aside for the next time she went into down. She pulled on her gloves: leather, humming against her skin. Daylight would hang around for another three hours or so, she thought. They'd been selling calendars the last time she'd been in town, big thick almanacs with modern bindings and charts for sunrise and sunset. She hadn't bought one. She told herself she liked the surprise, but in reality she preferred not to know how long it would be until spring.

She'd only have a few hours to do the chores she'd promised herself would be completed. In the back of the house sat thick blocks of wood. They were very dead, and so she could move them, a bit. If she focused, she could manipulate them. They didn't speak to her, but they dreamed.

Nina steeled herself against the cold and went outside to practice her carpentry.