Three weeks into Ashveil and Caelum had stopped holding the pause.
Not because he had failed. Because he had gotten good enough at it that the pause was no longer a thing he had to think about it had become automatic, which was the point, except that automatic was not where Rhea wanted him yet.
She had explained this to him with the directness she used for everything, sitting in the east field with the autumn wind pulling at the dry grass around them. "Automatic is not the same as chosen," she said. "When something is automatic it means the body has learned it. When it is chosen it means the mind has caught up with the body. You need both."
"What's the difference in practice," he said.
"When you're under enough pressure, automatic breaks," she said. "What the body has learned can be overridden by enough fear or enough anger. What you have chosen, and chosen again, and chosen again after that that is harder to break."
He thought about that.
