THALRIC
She asked me to tell her about the exile on a Thursday evening. Not directly. Lyssara rarely approached difficult things directly when the indirect approach was available and more accurate. She asked me what the first morning in Ashfen had been like, and I understood what the question was actually asking, and I answered what she was actually asking because we had stopped needing the indirect approach to protect us from each other long enough ago that using it now would have been a different kind of dishonesty.
“Cold.
“Tell me the rest.”
We were on the northern terrace. The tea was already going cold, the way it always went cold when the conversation required more attention than the tea did, and the tree line was doing what it always did, and the evening was the specific evening
