I told Darius on the walk back from the river.
Not because I was obligated — the impulse to manage things alone had not fully died, it had simply become quieter — but because the information had weight I didn't want to carry alone, and he was the person I handed weight to now. That was what we had become. That was the specific arrangement of it.
He listened without interrupting, which was how he always listened to things that mattered — complete attention, no performance of reaction until he had the whole picture.
When I finished, he was quiet for exactly the length of time it took us to walk from the eastern tributary path back to the compound's main building. Seven minutes, approximately. I had learned not to fill his silences prematurely.
Then he said: "She knows what it is and won'
