He was there when she came out of the library, the way he sometimes was at the end of significant evenings — not waiting exactly, not having tracked her movements deliberately, just having arrived at the river window the way he arrived at it whenever something needed thinking through, and found her coming down the corridor in the same direction at the same time.
"Maren?" he asked, reading the quality of her expression.
"The library," she confirmed.
He held the window's view, making room for her beside him in the specific way he'd been making room for fourteen years — not adjusting his physical position exactly, but somehow simply being open to her, the way the bond was always open, the specific orientation of someone who has long since stopped needing to manage their own attention and s
