She woke in Thessaly's office.
The lamp was low. The room smelled of herbs and the particular electric quality that meant Thessaly had been running assessments recently. The ceiling was familiar — stone, the old wing, the same ceiling she had looked at in this office on day two when she was beginning to understand what she was.
She understood it fully now.
She turned her head.
Damien was in the chair beside the examination table. He had not managed to stay awake — he was slightly upright, arms crossed, the posture of a man who had intended to keep watch and had lost the argument with his own exhaustion somewhere in the hours between then and now.
She looked at him for a long time.
At this man who had caught her before she hit the ground. Who had carried her through the compound — she
