The two days Dara had estimated became four.
I did not ask about it. I understood that these things moved at their own pace and that asking repeatedly would not change the pace and would only make the waiting harder. So I did what I had learned to do with things I could not control. I put my attention on the things I could.
Training in the mornings. Moss in the early hours and sometimes again in the late afternoon when he had something new to work through. The commander briefings every other day where I sat at the table now as Rowan had said, not as an observer but as someone who belonged there, and where the border commanders had stopped exchanging glances when I spoke and had started simply responding.
That shift had happened gradually enough that I had not noticed it until one mornin
