~Selene's POV~
He knocks at nine.
Not eight fifty-seven. Not nine-oh-three. Nine, which is when she said to come back, stated through the closed door yesterday after she had counted sixty seconds of his footsteps not leaving, she had opened the door a fraction and said it to the hallway without looking at whether he was still there, and then closed it again before she could confirm that he had heard. He heard. The knock arrives at nine with a precision that is not coincidence and is not performance. It is information.
She has been awake since five-forty-one with Lior, who has no position on the significance of the morning and considerable positions on the subject of breakfast. She fed him and then Asha and then sat with her tea at the kitchen table while the city came gradually into it
