"Vaela is close," Isla said after a while. Not to fill the silence. Just as information, the way she offered things she thought I'd want to know. "I can feel her more clearly when we're like this."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Near you," she said. "She responds to it."
I understood that. Vorak responded to it too, had been responding to it since the moment Isla stepped into this room, but I wasn't going to say that out loud because some things were better left as understood rather than confirmed. She already knew. She'd known for a while now what effect she had and she'd stopped pretending she didn't, which was one of the changes I'd noticed most clearly without being able to name it precisely until it was already there.
Her attention stayed on me quietly afterward while the room settled dee
