He had known it would be bad.
Theo had told him. Not in the managed, diplomatic way that Theo sometimes delivered difficult information when he was trying to calibrate the recipient's reaction, but directly, in the flat factual register he used when he had decided that calibration was not a kindness. He had told Damon what he had seen in the two weeks he spent on Crimson Ridge territory. What the river mornings had shown him. What the house showed him every day just by being what it was.
Damon had listened.
He had thought he understood.
He had been wrong.
Understanding something as information and understanding it as the thing itself were two entirely different experiences, and no amount of Theo's precise reporting had prepared him for the specific, cumulative, quietly devastating rea
