The rumor reached me before the man did.
"He's back in Goldmont," Freya said, sliding into the seat across from me at lunch two days later, her voice carrying an edge of something I hadn't heard from her before, almost like an excitement she wasn't quite willing to admit to out loud yet. "Landed yesterday, according to three separate people who all seemed remarkably eager to be the one to tell me first, actually racing each other to my phone with the news."
"Damian." I said the name carefully, testing the shape of it in my mouth after years of not saying it at all, letting it sit on my tongue like something half remembered.
"Damian." She watched my face with the particular attentiveness she'd started directing at me lately, the look of someone gathering data she fully intended to use la
