Byerly's loyalties don't change that awful sense of humor, the one Sonia's always delighted in, just shifted its direction, and should she be surprised? He is, after all, the same man she's known these last few months, just a few surface layers scrubbed away. And the joke, honestly funny, catches her off guard, and a small, delighted laugh escapes partway out of her mouth before she covers it quickly with her hand.

"Tree Princess, you mean," she corrects before she can stop herself, and for just one thrilling, paralyzing moment, things feel like they used to. Clever, catty jokes started by one and finished by the other, derisive commentary on high society and all its trappings in the most literal sense of the word, good-natured jabs at one another's dignity. It had come so easily between them, and now, just in this slip-and-grip moment, it comes easily again.

But it's all wrong. Because the man standing below her is a traitor, and she is a prisoner, crushingly lonely, and her throat tightens as it all falls away. It hurts as soon as that naked moment is over, hurts even worse than before, because she missed it, she really, truly missed it, but it's all wrong. The only sound above Byerly now is a shaky inward breath and the rustling of the branches as she climbs higher in the tree.