Aria shut her eyes.
A moment later she opened them.
“How can you know that?”
“Because it happened to me. Two centuries ago, when I came to this chair, I had a husband. He traveled here with me. He sat beyond the iron circle just as Kael sits outside yours now. For thirty years he came every day. Later he came once each season. Later still, once a year. I never told him not to come. My love didn’t lessen. It changed. After seventy years he stopped visiting because age had made the journey too difficult. He died in a southern village I’ve never seen. Through the remains of our bond, I felt the moment he died. I grieved him for one day. Then I returned to the chair because the work was waiting, and the work mattered more than mourning.”
Tears were running down Aria’s face.
They fell with
