Damian's Pov
She came back from the bookshop soaked through and pale in a way rain alone doesn't explain, and I made the mistake of asking what happened before I'd thought carefully enough about how to ask it.
"Not yet," she said, peeling off her coat like it had personally betrayed her. "I need to think before I say it out loud. If I say it wrong, it becomes true before I've decided whether I believe it."
I let it go. Rule four cuts both ways she's allowed to name when something's too much, and I've never once been the man who pushes past a door someone's just told me is closed. I've been the man who waits outside it, listening for what leaks under the frame, which is its own kind of dishonesty I don't examine too closely.
What she did tell me, eventually, over tea she didn't drink, w
