The elder was still talking.
Aldric knew this because the man's mouth was moving. He could see it from where he sat at the head of the long table — Elder Rowan's lips forming words, his hands gesturing over the map spread between them, the other two elders nodding at intervals with the practiced agreement of men who had been nodding in meeting rooms for decades.
He could not have repeated a single word that had been said in the last four minutes.
He was thinking about her hands.
Not in any deliberate way. The thought had simply arrived and refused to leave — the way she had pulled her hand back from his forearm, quick and instinctive, like she hadn't meant to be touching him and was correcting the mistake before he noticed.
The warmth of her fingers through his sleeve. The way she ha
