NEVA POV
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We walked.
Not far — just out past the compound's east wall, to the strip of open ground where the training yard's noise didn't reach and the evening light had started doing the gold-grey thing it did over Ashveil in the hour before full dark. Duke walked beside me with his sketchbook held against his side, not open, and I understood by now that this meant he'd already decided this conversation wasn't going to be drawn.
It was going to be said.
"You don't have to make this easy for me," he said, when we stopped. "I've thought about how to start it a dozen different ways and none of them feel honest. So I'm just going to say it the plain way."
"Okay," I said.
He looked at me — the steady, complete attention he gave to everything, the quality that had made me trust him al
