She came back to the workshop early, and she knew why she came back early, and she did not leave when she saw the windows.
Morning had not yet climbed to full glare. The inner water still held that silver-green hour before the reef ring turned cruel with light, and Brineshell's walkways smelled more of wet wood than market spice. Iva crossed them with her pack on one shoulder and last night's notebook decision still sitting under her ribs like a swallowed coin. Her name remained in the margin of the navigation panel note.
She had looked at it once before dawn, then closed the book and come here instead of taking the extra hour in bed she badly needed.
Professional reasons, she told herself once, without conviction. The east wash wanted checking in early light. The channel-marker correction deserved a second look. None of that explained arriving before first bell with heat still low in her body from memory and soreness still tucked between her thighs like a private bruise.
The workshop stood open to the morning. Mavrek was already inside, bent over the central table among sample strips and half-ground pigments. Natural light filled the room through the windows facing the community walkway. Through the panes she could see a woman carrying baskets toward the kitchens and a boy dragging a bundle of rush reeds twice his own size. Anyone on that walkway could see in. The windows were simply there, as they had always been.
From the far end of the boards they would make a stage of the room if anyone cared to look.
Mavrek looked up.
His gaze went to her face, then to the pack on her shoulder, then briefly to the panes and back. Not performative. Not a challenge. Recognition.
"You came early," he said.
"So are you."
"I did not sleep in the workshop for romance."
That nearly made her laugh, which would have been intolerable at this hour. She set the pack down on the side shelf because her hand needed somewhere to go. The air in the room smelled of night-work: oil, stone dust, lamp smoke gone faint in daylight, and maruk on his hands.
"Anyone can see in," she said.
"Aye."
No move toward the curtains. No stride to the door. He simply gave her the fact back.
Iva should have taken it and gone. Instead she stepped deeper into the workshop. That was the decision. Just one step past the point where caution remained plausible, then another, until she stood at the scarred worktable with daylight bright behind her.
She could have gone to the scaffold. The scaffold was safe -- the only place in Brineshell where her body answered to materialinstead of to the man standing three feet from her with oil on his hands. She chose the workshop instead. She chose the windows.
Mavrek's hand flattened over the sample cloth he had been folding.
"You know how open this room is," he said.
"I noticed."
"Aye."
The fear came sharp enough to taste. So did the wanting. They ran alongside one another so closely now that separating them felt like the wrong exercise for the morning.
She reached for his hand.
Oil slicked her fingertips at once, warm from his skin. Maruk and mineral dust. The smell rose between them. She lifted his hand without asking and looked at the amber shine in his palm as if it were a technical thing she had every right to inspect. Then, because she had already crossed every sensible line between the door and the table, she turned his wrist and pressed her mouth to the center of it.
The breath he took was not quiet.
"Iva."
The use of her name there, in daylight, with the bright panes at her back, made something low in her body clench hard.
"Do not start telling me to reconsider," she muttered against his wrist.
"Nay." His free hand came up and settled at the back of her neck. "I was not planning to insult you."
She lifted her head. They stood close enough now that if anyone looked in from the walkway they would not need imagination. Mavrek's gaze dropped once to her mouth and came back. Her pulse jumped in her throat. He was waiting again, damn him. Always letting the material declare itself.