REMI'S POV
Eleanor told me the rest of Aveline's story on a Saturday in August.
Isolde was four months old.
We went to the estate — Dax and Isolde and I, the Saturday before the alliance governance meeting, the day Eleanor had indicated in June that she had been saving something for. After the birth, she had said. When the immediate business is settled and you can receive it properly. I had understood: she was not withholding, she was timing. She knew that the story she had left out in February — the part she had saved from the corridor conversation, the part that deserved more than a corridor — required the right kind of attention, and the right kind of attention required not being in the first weeks after a birth.
The estate in August had a different quality from the December visit a
