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woman.
    “How does that work?” Jasmine asked.
    “I’m sure your parents told you,” Laev said.
    “Well, yes, before Nuin’s Passage, but I wasn’t paying attention, and now they’re concerned and I don’t want to bother them.”
    He was never supposed to have to talk about sex with Jasmine. That was a deal he’d made with her parents. Too bad she trusted him for answers.
    He tapped his fingers together, one of his FatherSire’s mannerisms, which would age him even more in her eyes. Just an older brother-figure. For a moment he thought of her real older brother, Nuin, felt the echoes of his own hot passion for his HeartMate during Second Passage. No. All his problems stemmed from that mistake when he was seventeen.
    “I don’t recall exactly making the HeartGift during my Passage.” Just the connection, the lust, the need to imprint a sculpture with all that he was, pour all his Flair and energy into it. It reflected his deepest self at the time. And it was gone.
    “Laev?”
    He jerked his mind back to the girl in front of him. She’d bounced back already, sure her brother would be fine, years from her own Second Passage. Still wanting answers.
    “Most people don’t recall making a HeartGift.” He knew that for a truth. “You have just enough knowledge and control not to hurt yourself during the fever dream. There’s an urgency to make the gift.”
    Jasmine grimaced. “Well, Nuin is a glass artist. Dad cleared out most of Nuin’s sitting room and set up a workshop for him instead, for him to make his HeartGift.”
    “Your father’s a wise and pragmatic man.”
    The girl rolled a shoulder, then leaned back and drank her cocoa in silence. After a minute, she nodded, hopped to her feet, and translocated the mug to the cleanser. When she smiled at him, it was brilliant. “Everything will be fine.”
    “I’m sure it will.”
    “And everyone thinks Nuin has a HeartMate. And being a HeartMate is wonderful.” Enthusiasm laced her voice.
    “So they say,” he replied drily.
    She lifted her chin. “I know . I see it every day with Mother and Father. You just need—”
    “Jasmine—” he warned.
    “—companionship. If you don’t want to look for your HeartMate right now, why don’t I ask my mother to find you a Familiar animal companion?”
    “I have a Fam, Black Pierre,” Laev said. He would never want another wife, a HeartMate supposedly made for him or not.
    “He was your FatherSire’s Fam. He’s old and sleeps in the kitchen all day. I think he’s the chef’s Fam now.”
    She was right. That realization had pain splintering through Laev. Nothing he’d show her. His throat tightened and he scraped words from it. “The morning is going downhill.”
    Jasmine winced. “I’m sorry, but you’re too lonely, and I love you as much as my own dad.”
    “I’m considerably younger and I don’t need companions.” He felt his gaze frost again. “There are fifty Hawthorns working in this Residence.”
    “Which of them are you really close to?” she asked softly. When he didn’t answer, and the silence became strained, she looked at the door to her office, then at him. She inhaled deeply and marched back to his desk. Picking up a card from the “invitation” basket that Laev emptied every week, she flipped it in front of him. “You should go to this party tonight.”
    He glanced at the card that was an odd shade of gray and had artistically ragged edges. “The Salvage Ball.” He grunted. “What is this?”
    “It’s more of a party than a ball, I hear. We Ashes are not invited. We did not have any investments or property in the merchant ship that went down centuries ago and was salvaged in ’07.”
    Laev stiffened. He didn’t care to be reminded of the trial regarding that ship. That had been the day he’d first seen—and fallen for—Nivea. But he recalled that Nivea had gone to the Salvage Ball though he never had.
    Jasmine said, “And be sure to take an ugly item from your