We walked all night, and neither of us said the thing Bram had said.
I want you to understand what forced proximity actually is, because the phrase makes it sound soft, and it is not soft. It is hours. It is your legs aching and nowhere to sit that is not next to him. It is learning a person not because you chose to, but because there is a whole night of dark road and only one other heartbeat on it, and after a while the silence itself starts telling you things.
Here is what the silence told me about Alaric Voss.
He never walked in front of me and he never walked behind me. He walked beside me, always, and always on the side the wind came from, so that it hit him first. I do not think he knew he was doing it. He checked the tree line the way other people breathe, without thought and wit
