Lyna was already dressed and down in the tavern part of the inn when Zevran showed up the next morning. He stood at the door a few moments watching as she shoveled a large forkful of eggs into her mouth, talking around them to Bennito as he blushed under her regard.

He couldn't help smiling at the image she made, dark blue eyes wide with amusement and hands waving even as she continued eating. "No, really, he thought pants were out to kill people! It took three days even after he knew it was a joke to convince him he didn't have to block the bottom of his door so they couldn't slip in and eat him."

The large innkeeper burst out a laugh as she spoke, and it shook Zevran from his distraction. Coming forward he waited till Bennito quieted before speaking up. "Are you ready?"

Her head whipped around and he was confronted with confusion and then pleasure as she realized who he was. "Zevran! Yes, yes." She scooped the remainder of the eggs into her mouth then stood, her cup in her hand. "Coffee." She stated, her smile widening. "I've never had it, but it's lovely."

He watched her finish it off before grabbing her weapons, and all he could think was that her and coffee seemed like a terrible mix. She didn't need more energy, if anything she needed less, but it wasn't his place to tell her so, so he simply nodded and forced a smile to his face. "I've never cared for it."

"Maybe you need to try Bennito's. I think it might be magic." She sent a wink and a wave to the man as she followed Zevran outside, her face tilting up to the sun as they stepped into it. "It's a nice day."

"Yes." He started walking, knowing she would follow, and missed the way she scowled at his back.

"So," she skipped a bit to catch up with him. "What are your plans for me today?"

He glanced down at her and knew, knew, that the shiny smile on her face was fake, but didn't let himself care. "I figured we would introduce you to the others I work with. Well, the rest of them. You've met Esta already."

She fell silent, thinking back, and when she spoke again her voice was more serious. "Ah, the woman from yesterday morning. She spoke to me after that Crow did. She seemed… nice."

He laughed at the reluctant description. "Liar. You thought she was pushy."

She rolled her shoulders in a shrug, her gaze moving off to the stalls that they were walking past. "She was clever about it at least."

Another pause passed between them as she thought over what she would say next and he found himself giving her the time to do so, slipping, unknowingly, back into old habits that he had learned at her side.

"She would be an information gather than," she finally said at length before glancing to him for confirmation. When he gave it she continued. "A smart choice. Older but still attractive, unassuming and almost motherly in her regard. She must be very good at her job."

"She is."

Lyna shot him a smile and tucked her hands behind her back, her fingers catching lightly at the wood of her bow. "You always were good at knowing what a person would be best at."

It would be easy, amazingly easy, to pretend that it was like it had once been between them. He could think of a thousand moments that they had walked side by side, words flowing between them, but she had always been leaned against him those times, or holding his hand, or brushing against his arm.

She wasn't touching him now. No, now there was a very deliberate space between them.

It was a stark reminder of the time lost between them.

He made himself smile at her and took a step closer so that their arms brushed as they walked. "Well, I have always said I am the best. This is simply more proof that it is true, yes?"

She took a step away from him, fingers reaching out to pass over the bright colors of a bolt of cloth as they walked by it and turned a corner, reminding him of her constant need to move, to touch, to interact. "I'm not answering that. Tell me about the others."

"There are only a few you need worry about knowing well," he stated and began to tick off the names as he said them to her.

There would be Nico of course, since he handled keeping track of supplies and reports. Though Zevran wasn't overly fond of the idea of him and Lyna meeting. Not because he had slept with them, but rather because they were too alike in their observations and regard, if not in personality. He feared what they might come up with if they had each other to feed off of.

Then there were the twins, Silvano and Tomasso, the healer and archer respectively. Those two he feared for a different reason. Not that he was willing to think on why. No, he didn't care that they had charming smiles and blue green eyes, or that they had perfected the just-so tilt of their heads in order to stare at women from under their lashes and a perfectly tousled lock of their brown hair.

Because it didn't matter. It didn't.

He forced himself to move on to Cara, with her dark eyes and clever tongue. She had been brought in for the same reason as the others, she wanted away from the Crows, but her talents with poison had tipped the balance in their favor more often than not.

And finally, Armond, wrinkled and grey as he was, but a magician with his hammer and forge. He could make anything from nothing, and as ragged and small as Zevran's group was nothing was often what they had.

He told her about various others that she might run into and need to know before finally coming to a stop as they entered a quieter part of the city. "There is one more person I think you will be very interested in meeting."

"Oh?"

"Our resident pick pocket and sneak. He has the most remarkable ability of getting in anywhere. I would be quite jealous if I wasn't so wonderful myself."

Lyna lifted a brow and Zevran felt his smile widen at the way she deliberately kept from agreeing with him. "He's name is Carman, he's twelve."

He watched as her face scrunched slightly in displeasure, and he knew exactly what she would say before she said it. "Don't bother saying he is too young, Warden. The Crows buy them much younger. He is lucky enough to be with us instead of them, yes?"

She opened her mouth to reply but seemed to think better of it. He was sure she was remembering his own stories about orphans and brothels and the gutter rats that hadn't even been as lucky as that. After a few moments she glanced around the street, noting the emptiness of it, before speaking again.

"About the warden thing, you can't call me that, Zevran. Not around anyone, not if I'm going to be helpful without the warden's coming down on me about 'not getting involved'."

It made sense, and his group did not need the extra attention having a warden would bring to them, but he couldn't give it to her that easily.

"So, who are you to be? A lone fighter lost from their clan and in hopes of finding adventure by teaming up with a dashing rogue?" He smiled slowly with his words, the sly tilted curve of his lips that usually had others blinking and blushing.

It only made Lyna look amused and had her voice warbling with humor. "Nothing so fanciful. Besides that would require that I fawn all over you and I have no desire to stroke your ego with my longing."

He almost made a joke about what she could stroke instead, but he didn't want them to be that comfortable with each other, being comfortable was dangerous, so instead he shrugged and started walking again. "Then make up what you will, and I will go along with it."

They walked for a few minutes longer in silence, following the turn of the road up until they left the market streets and were in the brothel district instead.

"Is this where you grew up," Lyna asked, her eyes skimming the near emptiness of the early morning streets, pausing as they found the lone patron taking their leave.

He didn't bother answering her, instead he watched as one of the patrons began to turn their way before grabbing her arm and tugging her into one of the tight alleys between the buildings and back to the end of it. Hearing footsteps getting closer he hooked his hands around her face and pressed his lips to hers.

It was supposed to be chaste, enough to not draw the attention of the Crow he had seen coming out of one of the buildings, a couple kissing in an alley was a common thing to see in the area, he had done it more than once here with others for the same reason, but her lips were warm and automatically opened to him, and her hands settled, uncertain, on his waist.

He couldn't help tightening his grip, his face tilting so that his mouth could settle more firmly, his tongue dipping in to tease over hers until she sighed through her nose, the soft warmth of it spreading over his cheek, and her fingers fisted against his armor.

He cursed himself and pulled back far enough that he could stare down at her. She stared back, her eyes wide and her lips still parted. Her vallaslin seemed to stand out above her skin in the dim light of the alley, and he had the most ridiculous urge to trace his lips along it.

"Zevran," Lyna started, the word unsure.

He found himself shaking his head and leaning back in to kiss her again. There was no preamble this time; he simply licked into her mouth as she tried to do the same to him. He dropped one of his hands to the small of her back, pulling her closer until their armor squeaked together in protest, and he could just start to torture himself with the press of her along his front.

She felt the same, smelled and tasted the same as well. As he nibbled at her bottom lip and captured her tongue again, he noticed that she made the same little moans and sighs that he heard every night in his sleep. He bit lightly at her lip again before soothing it with his tongue and had just pushed her back against the wall, just situated his leg between hers when she turned away, her forehead pressing into his shoulder, and told him to stop.

They didn't speak for a minute as they continued to grip each other, both unwilling it seemed to be the first to let go. Instead they let the alley be filled with nothing more than the sound of their uneven breathing, and the occasional shift of leather against leather. Finally, Lyna gave him a gentle push back.

"You're going to regret this if we keep going. We both are."

Her words, quiet as they were, did the job of snapping him back to the present and where and who they were. "It was all part of the plan, Warden," he said in a deliberately light voice. Dropping his hands from her, he reached just behind her head and pushed the switch that lay nestled in the crumbling stone and dead vines.

When the door opened behind Lyna and caused her to stumble back before catching herself, he couldn't help smiling darkly. Petty maybe, but he was still feeling too mixed up to not feel at least a little vindictive.

"Didn't want anyone suspecting why we came down here. I do it all the time." He took her arm and turned her to face the dark passage and the dying light that rested a ways down it.

"Secret passages?" Lyna squinted into the darkness before looking back at him, curious.

"Are essential in Antiva," he replied and lead her in before shutting the door behind them.