Wren's POV
Three days pass slower than any three days I can remember, each one built out of small, careful politeness between us, meals eaten at the same table without quite meeting each other's eyes, corridors where we both find sudden urgent reasons to be somewhere else. I tell myself I don't mind the distance. I spend a great deal of energy telling myself that, which is usually a sign it isn't true.
I caught him three days later in Corwin's study, his voice pitched low enough that I could only hear the tail end of the conversation before they noticed me in the doorway, but it's enough. Enough to hear the words Ember Wolf spoken plainly for the first time, not as rumor or half-suggestion, but as fact, discussing the way you'd discuss a diagnosis.
They both go silent the moment they se
