I went to find him alone.
No warriors. No Maren. No Rowan trailing two steps behind with his careful, contained alarm. The study had erupted into the kind of urgent low conversation that happens when an entire understanding of the last three weeks reorganizes itself in real time, and in the middle of it I had stood up and said I needed to do this myself, and Caden had looked at me for one long moment and then nodded.
He had not argued.
Rowan had started to. Maren had started to. Caden had simply said, "Let her," in the flat certain voice that ended arguments before they fully began, and I had felt the specific gratitude of being trusted with something that frightened the people who loved me.
I found him in the library.
He was reading. I noticed that before I noticed anything else, and
