The man inside didn’t look like an architect from any angle. He resembled a ghost instead.

Victor Thorne was skeletal, his hair a matted white mess, his fingers stained with the charcoal he had used to draw complex equations on the stone walls of his cell.

"Thorne," Evelina said, her voice echoing in the small space.

The man didn’t move, "Leave me be. I’ve already told the Church that I will never confess to being a demon when I am not one. My knowledge is not a curse. Kill me and be done with it."

"I don’t want to kill you," Evelina said. She reached through the bars and slid the blueprints for the Prototype Steam Engine onto the floor, "I want you to build this."

Thorne paused.

Although Evelina’s voice was cold but there was an unbiasedness and gentleness in her tone that he had never heard in years. Nobody ever talked to him like he was a human at all.

Thorne crawled forward, his movements slow and painful. He picked up the parchment, his eyes squinting in the dim light of the torch Ace held.

At first, he looked confused. Then, his breathing hitched and he began to scramble, pulling the pages closer.

A single, heavy tear fell from his eye, splashing onto the ink.

"The pressure... the expansion of vapor..." he whispered, his voice trembling with a raw fervor. He looked up at Evelina, his face transformed by a terrifying clarity, "You... This... Somebody actually figured out what I had been saying all these years and you even turned it into a blueprint... didn’t just find this. This... this isn’t heresy at all... This is genius."

He clutched the blueprints to his chest as if they were a holy relic, his body shaking with a sob, "This... this will change the world. It will make the gods irrelevant."

Evelina looked at him, her face calm and unreadable, "If Gods exist, they wouldn’t favor a human who doesn’t stand up for themselves. At the end of the, we still need to fight our own fights."

Behind her, Ace watched the exchange, his heart racing as he watched his wife.

...

On their way back, the sky suddenly darkened over. One moment, it waa shimmering blanket of heat and the next, a wall of howling wind slammed into the side of the carriage with the force of a battering ram.

"Dust storm!" Ace roared over the screech of the gale. He didn’t wait for the coachman to react. He threw open the door, shielding his face with his cloak as a whirlwind of stinging sand tried to invade the cabin, "Out! We can’t stay in the carriage... the wind will flip it!"

Ace’s instincts took over. He grabbed Evelina’s waist, hauling her out of the cabin and tucking her firmly under the crook of his arm to keep her from being swept away. Nearby, the guards were already struggling to secure the horses and the skeletal, wide-eyed VictorThorne.

"There!" Ace pointed toward a small outcrop of rock where a backup military supply cache was stationed. Only two small, weather-beaten tents stood there, shivering against the onslaught.

With a series of sharp commands, Ace directed the guards and the prisoner into the first tent. It was a tight, miserable fit, but it was cover. That left the second tent, a space barely larger than a nobleman’s closet, for the Duke and Duchess.

As they ducked inside the flap, the roar of the storm was muffled, replaced by the frantic thrum-thrum-thrum of canvas straining against the wind. The air inside was thick with heat and fine silt.

Ace let out a violent cough, his lungs protesting the dust. As he straightened up, the reality of their situation hit him.

The tent was tiny. To stand, they had to be shoulder-to-shoulder; to sit, their knees would inevitably lock.

His breathing, already labored from the exertion, became heavy for an entirely different reason. A hot flush climbed up his neck, clashing vividly with the dust on his skin. He opened his mouth to apologize for the indignity of the quarters, but the words died in his throat.

Evelina was already sitting on the cramped rug, her back to him. She looked so small, her silhouette was framed by the flickering light of a single oil lantern.

The the vulnerable curve of her spine, the messy strands of hair escaping her pins silenced Ace’s internal panic.

He felt a fierce urge to protect this tiny space from the world outside.

"I could only manage this in the short notice... It’s not as good," Ace managed to say, his voice a bit more gravelly than usual.

Evelina didn’t turn around, "It has a roof and a floor, Ace. It’s better thandying out there in the wild.."

Ace cleared his throat, trying to regain his footing as the Iron Duke.

He unbuckled his heavy, fur-lined cloak, a symbol of his rank and draped it over her shoulders.

"You never know... the desert might just get cold when the sun is blocked," his heart racing as his fingers brushed the back of her neck.

He moved to the center of the tent and began to fuss with a small brass heater. Within minutes, a tiny flame was dancing in the grate, casting a golden glow over the canvas walls.

He sat down beside her, making sure to leave exactly two inches of respectful distance, though his thigh felt the heat radiating from hers.

"Do you remember," Ace started in a softer voice, "the first time we were caught in a storm? You were twelve. I had just finished my first year at the academy. We hid in your father’s gazebo, and you cried because the lightning was too loud."

He looked at her, his expression softening with a genuine tenderness, "I promised you then that I’d always be the one to stand between you and any thunder that scares you. I know... things have changed. But I meant it, Evelina. Even now, I do."