Iris arrived at Ironpeak properly, not as a visitor passing through, not under any form of duress or obligation. She came because Rowan had asked her, and she had wanted to come, and those two things together were apparently sufficient.
I watched her arrive from the east wing corridor window, a small woman with dark eyes and the particular physical quality of someone who had spent a long time being careful and was only now beginning to remember what it felt like to move through a room without that carefulness. She carried one bag, which Rowan took from her before she had finished coming through the gate, and she let him take it in the specific way of someone who was still relearning which things she was allowed to accept without it meaning something that cost her later.
The constructed b
