NEVA POV
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Caius had been outside the gate for a long time.
I knew this because Ryke told me on the way across the compound, and because when we reached the gate and I opened it, Caius was standing exactly as I'd expected him to be standing — not pacing, not leaning, just present in the specific way he'd always occupied difficult spaces, spine straight, nothing performed, the man who'd spent four months learning to occupy a room without his sight and had carried the habit into every room since.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
He was different from the man I'd left behind. Not fundamentally — the essential architecture was the same, the pride, the contained quality, the jaw that set a particular way when he was holding something steady that didn't want to be held. But there were l
