Weeks after the table.
Marcus had not talked about what happened that night. Not to Sera. Not to Darius. Not even to Neva directly, which was unusual because Neva was the person he talked to about everything, not because she pushed but because her silences were the kind that made you fill them.
He had been fine. That was the problem.
He had been so relentlessly, visibly, deliberately fine that Neva had watched him be fine for three weeks and had finally, on a Wednesday morning while child Aldis slept and the compound was in its working hours, sat across from him at the east wing table and said:
"Stop."
Marcus looked up from the perimeter report.
"Stop being fine," she said.
"I'm—"
"I know what you're doing," she said. "You've been doing it since the table. Since Rowan read you. You
