"Arthur…"
The name comes out almost without voice.
I expect Rhayne to lower the letter, but she keeps reading. Her eyes go back to the top of the page and move through the same lines again, more slowly, as if the first reading wasn't enough to accept what was written there.
I know the space Arthur occupies in her.
Rhayne talked about that man the way someone talks about a part of their own making, not just a teacher. He was the one who found her alone in Thirstfall, the one who taught her everything that turned a frightened girl into a spy capable of crossing a room without being noticed.
When she told me about him for the first time, she cried before she even knew whether he was dead.
So I expect tears now.
Strangely, they don't come.
What happens instead is the color draining out of her face.
