The pencil was still in the cup.
She'd been looking at it every time she came to the east tower — since the third mark, the unnamed undated line she'd made at twelve weeks. The pencil sitting in its cup. The mark waiting below the other two. Space around it.
Thirty-four weeks.
She picked the pencil up.
He was in the doorway.
She hadn't heard him come in — she'd been looking at the door frame and he'd simply arrived, the way he arrived now when she was at the Hold, the way Caelen navigated him toward where she was with the patient specific certainty of a wolf who understood geography as direction rather than distance.
She held the pencil.
He crossed the room.
Stood beside her.
She made the mark.
Below the third line — the unnamed one from twelve weeks — a line. Beside it, in her h
