Exhausted after her trip to Loot, Paedyn received a note slid under her door from Kai. In it, Kai joked about training lazy recruits, hinted that Kitt was trying to separate them, and asked Paedyn to entertain him, signing off as “Your Cocky Bastard.”

Paedyn wrote back, teasing him for the signature and confiding about choosing wedding dress fabric and how it sharpened her grief for Adena. She revealed she had visited the Fort in Loot, met someone who loved Adena too, and said she would have run away with Kai from the poppy field if she could. She urged him to punch an Imperial and bantered about him counting her freckles, signing “Your Pae.”

Kai replied that he was glad she went to the Fort and admitted he worried for her. He suggested they could still flee onto the Shallows and find Astrum if she wished, adding a playful update to the freckles count. Later, when they briefly crossed paths in the corridor, Paedyn slipped him another note in passing touch, telling him his duty bound him to Kitt while hers bound her to marry Kitt, but that they would always have the willow tree; she dared him to get close enough to count her freckles.

That evening, Paedyn dined with King Kitt in the throne room, where they talked idly and tried to repair their bond. She concealed her plan to continue the illicit correspondence afterward. Returning to her room, she found Kai’s ardent reply, in which he vowed he would beg to run away with her, would follow if she left, and would bow if she stayed, declaring that loving her made him matter and that she owned his heart. He ended with a flirtatious promise to “bite” if asked.

Moved but cautious, Paedyn stored his note with the others and attempted to respond. Unable to write “I love you,” she told him he sounded like a poet or a fool and insisted she would not let him ruin himself for her. Kai’s quick final note recalled his earlier words and affirmed, “I want you to be my ruin.”