[KAEL — POV]
He arrived first. Started at the bottom of the crossword again — a new one, Wednesday's — and got four answers in before she arrived.
She came in wet from the rain, shaking it off her jacket with a briskness that was entirely her, and sat across from him, and looked at him with eyes that had already calibrated to receive something difficult.
"Tell me," she said. Not even coffee first.
He told her about Theydon. About the retaliatory operations. About the eleven.
He told her with the specific care of someone who knows the information is going to land hard and has thought about how to deliver it without either softening it into something misleading or laying it down like an accusation. It was not the Noctis Court's fault. It was not the Flame's fault. It was both their faul
