Duncan found Hades on the back steps, where he had been since before dawn, a mug of tea gone cold between his hands. The pups had finally stopped wrestling on the lawn. They lay in a heap, and one of them snored like a bellows.
Duncan sat down beside him. For a while neither of them spoke.
"Julie saw it," he said at last. "The hall. The lamp. The sparin'. The white shirt."
Hades didn't look at him. He turned the mug a quarter turn in his hands.
"Ye knew," Duncan said.
"I suspected. There is a difference, and I did not like it." Hades drank, grimaced at the cold tea, and set it down. "I wondered when the door would give."
"Ye could have said something."
"I could have. You would not have believed me, and you would have gone hunting for him before you had any reason to." Hades looked at him then, and his face was not unkind. "You were never going to look at that man's face willingly, Duncan. Some part of you built that door for a reason."
