She woke to the smell of him.
That was the first thing. Before the sound of the compound outside the window, before the gray light telling her it was mid-morning, before the awareness of the stone floor under her and the wall at her back. Before any of that was the smell.
Pine and cold air and something underneath both of those that had no name in any language she had learned. Something that was simply his, the way a voice was simply a person's, unmistakable once you knew it.
She had been smelling it for three days without identifying it.
Now, waking in the sealed room with her shoulder against his and the morning pressing in through the small window, she identified it.
Her eyes opened.
The room was lighter than when she had closed them. Mid-morning light, the sun above the eastern h
