POV: Cassian and Bastien (Alternating)
They were never chosen romantically. They stay anyway.
CASSIAN
Aphrodite is with the twins.
The specific quality of the three of them together now — no rivalry running in the twin bonds' quality, no territorial heat, no managing of the distance between Aphrodite and someone else's presence in her space. Just the three of them in the warmth of the bonds and the warmth of the choosing, the specific settled quality of people who have found the right configuration after a long time of configurations that were close but not quite.
Eros stands at a respectful distance.
Not the between-space distance — the physical-world distance of someone who has been chosen and is in the specific position of someone who is present in the relationship and present in the space and who is not pushing for more than what the space contains at the current moment.
I watch all of this.
