~Caden's POV~
He drives south through the morning without the radio on.
Three hours is long enough to think and short enough that the thinking does not resolve into anything that resembles a conclusion. He has not tried to make it resolve. Rhys told him not to prepare a speech and the instruction was correct, and the corollary of not preparing a speech is not filling the three hours with the mental equivalent of one. He drives. The road moves. The Cresthaven treeline thins into the neutral territory pines and then into the broader landscape of a city that does not know his name or his title and owes him nothing.
Silvermere takes shape from the south approach as a city of ordinary height and ordinary density, neither impressive nor modest, which is consistent with everything he knows abo
