Oh! Rich! She thought money was of little consequence – and it had been, to her.

He was silent to her assertion, and to her plan. He turned his head to regard her with a cool look, the corner a ways away yet …

“Father had always had a calming effect on me,” he answered, lightly. “Shame about that.”

He let his arms drop and rolled his shoulders, bile in his throat and venom begging to find its target. He swallowed instead.

“You know,” he mused, gasping his hands together as though a profound realization had just come to him. “Yasmin had, too. Even Ali had made me a more confident man than the one before you now. Whatever happened to them, Nisa?” he asked, plaintively, but his gaze was sharp. “Or anyone in the history of history, other than yourself, that I’ve touched for more than five seconds. Were they not challenge enough, Nisa?”

There was a sweetness to the inflection on her name – a bitter sweetness, but a sweetness nonetheless.

Conveniently for Malachi and that lady from knitting with her ear pressed hungrily to the wall, their voices echoed between the odd ambiance between the houses.