He heard her before he saw her.
Thorne supposed his hearing had gotten better in the time he'd spent blind, because take now, for instance - he knew it was Cinder walking up behind him even before he turned and saw her.
She was walking slowly, like she had time to kill, but that didn't even make sense, considering it was half past three a.m. and they were in the royal garden. Now that he and Cress were married, they were officially settled in the American Republic, but they still spent a lot of time traveling, and now they were spending a few days in New Beijing with Kai and Cinder.
"Thorne, is that you?"
Cinder had reached the bench where Thorne sat, and he nodded, figuring she could figure it out for herself anyway. "What are you doing out here at this hour, your royal empressness?"
"Be quiet, Thorne." She sat down on the bench next to him and he noticed her baby daughter Peony wrapped in a blanket in her arms. "Peony couldn't sleep, and I figured we could both use the fresh air. I might ask the same of you anyway."
He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep either."
She didn't press the issue, and he watched as she shifted Peony in her arms. Peony was still awake, Thorne noted, her dark eyes darting around as Cinder leaned her head down to kiss her forehead softly. Cinder whispered something Thorne didn't hear before she lifted her head and smiled briefly at Thorne. "So how are things, Thorne?"
She caught him slightly off guard, and he nodded quickly. "Things are good."
"Good? That's all you have for me, Captain?"
She didn't normally call him Captain. He supposed both of them were too tired for their own good. "Things are great. Things are marvelous. Things are absolutely spiffing."
"Better." She smiled and paused before looking down at Peony and adding, "How are things with Cress and the baby?"
He rushed into the answer too quickly to think about where he was going with it. "Oh, amazing. The baby's still, you know, inside Cress, and Cress still makes a great hacker, not that I need one. Everything I'm doing is perfectly legal, your royal empressness, so feel free to give me some sort of reverse ticket or something like that."
He thought he saw her frown, but then she rolled her eyes and said, "You know that's not how it works, Thorne."
"Well, it should be," said Thorne, leaning forward, somewhat animated for the hour. "People should get paid for not doing crimes. It'd be great! We'd all be so law-abiding!"
"And completely broke," said Cinder. "You'd have to pay the money you made not breaking laws as taxes so the government could keep paying people not to break laws. I think the system we have now works just fine."
Thorne sighed. "You've gotten so boring ever since you became empress."
She fiddled with Peony's blanket. "I can't say you've gotten exactly fascinating since you settled down in the American Republic either, Thorne."
He raised his eyebrows at her. "Are you calling me boring, oh your royal highness who can't stay on video comms past nine because she needs sleep?"
It was true; Kai and Cinder had both been leaving their occasional video comms earlier now that Peony was born. Cinder shrugged. "You're the one who started it, Captain Carswell Thorne who answers questions in an actual decent manner and not in a ridiculous way like he used to." Thorne saw her hesitating, although they were both laughing, before she said, "I mean it, Thorne. . . is everything okay?"
He looked at his hands for a minute. He wasn't going to tell Cinder how terrified he was to find out that he and Cress were pregnant, how scared he was that he would fail her and their child. He wasn't going to tell her about the nightmares that still plagued him or about the fear that he constantly lived with - that he wasn't good enough for Cress, and now for their baby, too. He wasn't going to tell her the real reason he couldn't sleep - that he had been lying in bed thinking about all the ways he could let down Cress and their child. So he looked up from his hands, looked Cinder in the eye, and said, "Yeah. Everything is great."