LYSSARA
The bond's continued pull was not a question about what I wanted. It was a question about what was possible and what it would cost and whether the cost was one I could ask anyone to help me pay and I had been working out the answers to all three of those questions since the night I lay awake in the dark feeling Kaelrith through the walls of Ashfen's pack house with a clarity that made eleven months of managed distance feel like the theoretical thing it had always been.
I had the answers now.
I found Thalric in the study before breakfast and I sat across from him with my hands flat on the table the way I sat when I had something to deliver that required his full attention and I waited for him to look up from what he was working on and give it to me.
He looked up. He gave it to m
