November bypassed every chair in the room. There were several — heavy, high-backed, the kind that demanded a certain posture. She walked past them to the rug in front of the cold hearth, lowered herself to the floor, crossed her legs, and set her tea beside her on the stone. Chairs were formal. Floors were honest. She'd never been able to explain this to anyone who didn't already understand it.
She reached over and pulled a book from the lowest shelf. It was heavy, leather-bound, with pages that were thick and slightly rough-edged. The text was incomprehensible. Her nanite translator, the small silver dot implanted behind her left ear, parsed the characters and returned nothing useful — fragments, half-meanings, the linguistic equivalent of static. Whatever language this was, the translator didn't have a full matrix for it.
The illustrations, though.
November turned the pages in the pale starlight and found animals, dozens of them, rendered in painstaking detail that suggested the artist had sat in front of each one for hours. Six-limbed creatures she recognized as the kethral from the stables. Smaller things that might have been predators: low-slung, with heavy jaws and forward-facing eyes. Birds with doubled wingspans. Something aquatic and enormous and covered in what looked like bioluminescent spots.
She bent closer to a drawing of a heavily scaled mountain creature, thick through the chest, with forelimbs that ended in curved gripping claws. The detail was extraordinary. Someone had cared about this animal enough to render every scale individually.
She was humming. She didn't know when she'd started. Low, tuneless, the sound she always made when her hands were busy or her mind was working sideways — not a song, just warmth made audible. It filled the space between the book and the silence.
A shadow passed the doorway.
November didn't look up. She'd been absorbed in a two-page spread of something that looked like a cross between an elk and a porcupine, but she registered the movement. Registered the size of the shadow. Registered that it paused, held, and then moved on without a word.
Rhaezon.
She turned another page. The next animal had wings.
Morning lighton Aelthar was gold with an edge of copper to it, the amber star already high and dominant. November followed the smell of food down the main staircase and through the corridor to the kitchen, where the long table near the hearth was already occupied.
Davn sat at the far end, eating with unhurried efficiency. He had a plate of something dense and grain-based in front of him, a cup of the same dark tea she'd made last night, and a reader propped against the salt cellar. He glanced up when she entered. One nod. Back to the reader.
Rhaezon was standing at the preparation island with his back to her. He turned when he heard her footsteps, and for one second something happened to his face. The severe lines of it rearranged themselves into an expression she couldn't quite name before his control reasserted itself. He picked up a plate he'd already prepared and brought it to the table, setting it down at the place across from Davn.
"There's grain porridge. Fruit from the lower orchard. And…" he paused, the sentence stalling like an engine catching, "Mathen makes a cured meat. You don't have to eat it if the texture is —"
"This looks incredible. Thank you."
He sat down at the head of the table. Picked up his own cup. Put it down. Adjusted the angle of his plate. Picked up the cup again.
November ate. The porridge was nuttier than anything she'd had on Earth, with a slightly sweet undertone. The fruit was small, dusky purple, and burst against her tongue with a flavor somewhere between fig and plum. She ate three of them before she noticed Rhaezon watching her eat the third one, his own breakfast untouched.
He looked away.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable. Davn turned a page on his reader. November ate her porridge. Rhaezon moved his cup two inches to the left, then back.
His chair scraped the stone floor.
"I have business with Vasek regarding the north perimeter." He stood, already moving. "If you need anything, the kitchen staff can —"
"Rhaezon?"
He stopped in the doorway, shoulders set, his spine rigid.
"Thank you for breakfast."
He gave a single nod, then disappeared down the corridor, his footsteps receding until even the echo was gone.
November stared at the empty doorway. Her spoon hung motionless above the porridge. Something cold and familiar settled in her stomach — the quiet certainty that she'd miscalculated, said the wrong thing, been too much of something or not enough of something else.
"Don't take it personally."
She looked across the table. Davn hadn't lifted his eyes from the reader.
"He's not used to being around... people."
The pause beforepeoplecarried weight. November watched Davn's face for more. His expression gave her nothing. He turned another page.
