In the split second before the door fully opened, Darion found himself wondering what she would look like. The woman Seren had described. He imagined it in his mind: minor sorceress, morally flexible, used what she had when it suited her. He had built some picture in his head from those details and he was fairly certain the picture was wrong.
The door opened.
She was younger-looking than he had expected. Not too young, there was age in her face if you looked.
She had Seren's face in the way that parents sometimes had their children's faces, or children had their parents', the same arrangement of features, different in detail but unmistakably the same source.
She looked at Seren first.
Her face did something complicated. Of course it was not the open warmth of a mother who hadn't seen her daughter in months and was simply glad to see her, Darion hadn't expected to see that at all.
