LYSSARA
Thalric was on the northern terrace when I came through the door.
Not waiting. Present. The distinction mattered the way it always mattered with him — waiting implied an expectation being held at tension, and presence implied something settled and available, and without the specific forward lean of a man who needed something from the arriving.
He had two cups.
I crossed the terrace and took the second cup and stood beside him at the railing and looked at the tree line, and the tree line looked back with its ordinary indifference, and the cold was the cold of a turning season evening, and neither of us spoke.
After a while, he said: How was it.
“The same,” I said.
“Same cost,” he replied.
“Same cost.”
He received this without trying to reduce it, reframe it, or find the ang
