Azura's POV
The warmth hit my face the moment I stepped inside.
The fire had been burning since morning, crackling low and steady in the way fires do when nobody has been paying attention to them, but they have decided to keep going anyway. I did not sit. I moved to the window and stood there with my arms at my sides and looked out at the yard.
The gate was still open from where he had ridden out.
I looked at it for a moment. Then I looked at the road beyond it. Then, at the mist sitting over everything, like it had nowhere better to be.
I turned away from the window.
Liona came in a few minutes later. She did not say anything. She just came inside, closed the door behind her, and sat down on the chair near the wall with the quiet of someone who had already decided that whatever was about to happen, she was going to be present for it without making it about herself.
I looked back at the yard to check for the main person I needed right now.
