(Kaelen)
The news comes through Aldric at noon.
He finds us in the kitchen — me sitting at the table with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea gone cold, Theron standing at the counter not really doing anything with the bread he'd taken out an hour ago — and he says it the way you say things you've been rehearsing since before you knocked on the door.
"The council finalized the ruling this morning. Dorian and Seraphine. Banished."
The word sits in the air.
I press my thumbs into the ceramic and feel the cold of it.
"Seraphine went voluntarily," Aldric adds. "Chose to go with him. They left before dawn."
Theron sets the bread down.
Neither of us says anything for a moment. Not because there's nothing to say — there's too much, actually, the way there's too much in certain silences
