"Hopefully, I will have started all the nesting in motion before you become a hormone monster," Inej says tenderly. And she appreciates the permission, though she thinks she would have told Kaz even without it, and seen how things might have gone from there.

She's sad that their relationship is contentious in Darrow, but she understands why. Their friendship, such as it was, leaned toward business. Inej desperately wants Nina to see the man that she has, in fits and starts in Ketterdam and now, more and more in Darrow, but she knows the history of their arrangement makes it hard.

So she smiles a little and teases. "You know he wouldn't ask. He'd just let it happen and awkwardly hover on the edges of things. I have to tell him or he'll just be strange about it."