GIDEON
The bond had shifted around midday.
I’d been in a meeting with my territory managers – border reports, trade route adjustments, the ordinary machinery of running a territory – when it happened.
Brief. Warm. Like a candle being lit in an adjacent room.
She was dreaming.
I knew the texture of it through the bond; not fear, not grief. Something unguarded. The specific quality of someone who had fallen asleep without meaning to and taken their walls down with them.
The bond carried the edges of it. Warmth, and something underneath the warmth that I chose not to examine too closely, the way you chose not to look directly at something bright.
I kept my face completely neutral. Finished the sentence I’d been mid-way through. Let the meeting continue for another four minutes before
