The training yard was empty when I arrived.
It was the kind of quiet morning that exists just before a house fully wakes up. I stood in the center of it in the simplest dress I owned, one I could actually move in and I waited for Kieran.
He arrived exactly when he said he would.
He was already dressed for it wearing dark trousers and a loose shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, his hair pulled back, and a look on his face that said he had left the version of himself that stood quietly in corners somewhere in that room upstairs and brought a different one down here entirely.
He looked at me standing in the middle of the courtyard and said nothing for a moment. Then…
“The man who protected you. He taught you nothing at all?”
“He never thought he’d have to,” I said.
There w
