Chapter 390: One Day Out
Day 37 opened with Mira already at the fire when Kai arrived. She held out a cup before he'd finished sitting down.
"Mine," she said. "I didn't forget."
"I didn't think you would." He took it. "You said the arithmetic was fine."
"It is." She sat back, watching the fire instead of him. "I just like proving it."
"You could have let it go," Kai said. "Nobody was keeping score but us."
"That's exactly why I kept it." She drank before she went on. "If nobody else is watching, it has to matter to the two of us or it doesn't matter at all."
He thought about that longer than the sentence deserved. He didn't tell her so.
The cold had settled into something that no longer needed calling new. Frost stayed on the grass past midmorning now instead of burning off with the first hour of light. Kai checked his pool before he stood.
Ninety-five percent. He wrote it down and went to find Pell.
