He did not leave.
She had expected him to check on her — expected the knock, the brief visit, the practical assessment of how the new protocols were being implemented. She had expected him to leave. That was what people did. Even people who cared — they checked and they managed and they trusted the physicians and they went back to the things that required their attention.
Lucien did not go back to the things that required his attention.
He came to her room at seven in the morning, after Aldric had completed the first treatment of the new intensive protocol, and he sat in his chair. He read — he had brought correspondence with him, a stack of the administrative documents he worked through each morning, and he read them in her sitting room while Mira and Ailis moved through the space doin
