It means that if I go to the eastern territories and wait two months and come back and try to be something other than what I have been — she will still be here.
More herself than she has ever been. More his than she has ever been. And I will still be on the outside of it, watching.
I will always be on the outside of it.
Unless she is not here.
The thought arrives clean and complete, the way the clearest thoughts do — not built up piece by piece but simply there, fully formed, impossible to ignore once present. I sit with it. I do not flinch from it.
I have never been the kind of person who flinches from the honest shape of a thing.
If Ava is not here.
I stand up.
✦
The kitchen is empty at this hour.
The staff have finished the afternoon preparation and the evening meal is not yet begun and there is a window, narrow and specific, when the kitchen sits quiet. I have always known the windows in this palace. I have spent years learning them.
