Lydia finds me first.
I'm crossing the east courtyard on the way to the library when she steps out of the covered walkway, unhurried, dressed in something pale and immaculate that manages to look like grief without actually being it.
"Evelyn," she says. "I was hoping we could talk."
My mark doesn't flare. It does something subtler — a low tightening, the way a joint aches before weather changes. Not threat. Warning.
"Sure," I say. "Talk."
***
She takes me to the small sitting room off the east wing — neutral territory, technically, though she chose a room where she knows the layout and I don't. The chairs are positioned so that whoever sits with their back to the window is at a slight visual disadvantage.
She sits with her back to the wall.
I sit in the window chair and let the lig
