Chapter 24
"You're staring at me," I say.
Ryder doesn't deny it. He's crouched by the fireplace, adding the last of the broken wood to the coals, and his eyes are on me where I'm sitting on the bench pulling my boots back on. The light is gray now, early morning filtering through the gaps in the stone walls. The kind of light that makes everything look provisional, like the night is reconsidering its exit.
"I'm watching you put your boots on," he says. "There's a difference."
"Is there."
"You're doing it wrong. Left boot first, then right. You always do left first."
I stop. Look down at the right boot on my foot. He's correct, which is irritating.
"You've been cataloguing my boot order," I say.
"I notice things." He stands, brushing ash from his palms. "It's not a personality flaw."
"I'll decide what counts as a flaw."
He almost smiles. The version of him that almost smiles is still new enough that I don't know what to do with it, so I finish with my boots and say nothing further.
The bond sits between us easy and quiet. Not straining, not pulling. Just there, the way a fire is just there once you stop fighting it for warmth. I've been waiting for the strangeness of it to settle back in, for the old resistance to reassert itself now that the night is over and the world is reassembling its practical concerns. It hasn't. I'm not sure what that means, and I'm not going to examine it before I've had anything to eat.
"Thane's awake," Ryder says.
"How do you know?"
"He stopped walking about two hours ago. He's been sitting against the far wall since then. That kind of stillness is its own announcement."
I stand, roll my bandaged arm once to check the pull. Tight, but functional. I cross to the door and push it open.
The morning is cold and pale and smells like rain that already passed. Thane is exactly where Ryder said, back against the outer wall, knees up, forearms resting across them. He's watching the tree line. He doesn't look up when I come out, but his jaw shifts slightly, the small tell of someone who has been listening for footsteps and finally heard the right ones.
I sit down beside him. Not close enough to crowd, close enough to be intentional about it. The stone is cold through my trousers.
"Where's Caspian?" I ask.
"Scouting the perimeter." His voice is flat with the specific flatness of someone who has been alone with their own thoughts for too long. "He went out an hour ago. Said he'd be back."
"And you've been sitting here deciding whether to be angry."
He finally looks at me. His dark eyes are tired, and there's something underneath the tiredness that he doesn't bother tohide the way he usually does. Last night did something to his defenses that daylight hasn't repaired.
"I'm not angry," he says.
"Thane."
"I'm not," he says, quieter. "I wanted to be. It would've been simpler." He looks back at the trees. "I mostly just sat here and listened to you breathe through the wall and thought about the fact that six weeks ago I was calling you a contamination risk."
I don't say anything to that. He's not asking for absolution. He's just saying it, the way someone puts a stone down after carrying it too long.
"You weren't wrong, by the way," he says. "About what I was doing. The burning, the things I said in the corridor. I knew what I was doing."
"I know."
"It doesn't make it—"
"Thane." I turn to face him more directly. "I'm not sitting out here because I need an accounting. I came out here because you spent all night against a cold wall and nobody should have to do that."
