Drake came to Harrowfield on a Wednesday.
Remy felt him first.
He was at the library table with the Aldric text and a cup of tea that had gone cold and the specific internal stillness he maintained when he was working on something that required his full attention, and he felt the quality of the air change at eleven in the morning with a precision that was not quite physical sensation and not quite anything else — the sensing that came with two hundred and sixty years of calibrated awareness, the ability to feel the presence of things that were not visible.
He put down his pen.
He sat for a moment.
Then he went to find Aries.
Aries was in the garden — the formal section, not the wild, standing in the early-morning position that had become his habit, the specific orientation he took wh
