Dean discovered Theodore climbing the western palace façade on an otherwise peaceful August afternoon.
For several seconds, he simply stood beneath the open gallery doors and watched his twenty-one-year-old son move from one carved stone ledge to the next with the calm confidence of someone who had already calculated where every hand and foot needed to go.
Ducky stood in the courtyard below, staring upward with considerably more concern than Theo appeared to possess.
Dean closed his eyes.
There were stairs less than thirty meters away.
Perfectly functional stairs.
Theo caught the upper railing, pulled himself over it with an easy flex of his shoulders and landed on the balcony before straightening his shirt as though he had arrived by an entirely conventional route.
Dean looked at him.
"The lower corridor is blocked for repairs," Theo said.
"There are three other ways up here."
"This was faster."
