DUKE POV
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Duke had been watching Reine Castell since she'd arrived with one bag and the particular bearing of a woman who'd made an enormous decision and wasn't going to take it back.
He'd filled four pages already. Not because he couldn't stop — he could always stop, it was a choice — but because watching her navigate the compound was genuinely worth the pages. She moved through every space like she was solving it: where to stand, who to face, what to give away and what to keep. It was, he thought, the way very intelligent people moved through territory that wasn't yet theirs, and the fact that she never overclaimed made him considerably more willing to eventually give ground than if she'd walked in assuming.
He was also watching Neva.
He did this constantly and had long since sto
