Aelara could not sleep.
She had tried. She'd taken the small room at the back of Devra's safe house and lain down and closed her eyes and done everything a reasonable person does when they need to rest. None of it worked. Her brain was still going. Still sorting through everything the last two days had dropped into it, the room below the building, the name Lyra spoke, Seraphine's story, Drevon, all of it moving in circles that didn't settle.
She got up.
The main room of the safe house was quiet. Vaelor was at the table with a lamp low, going over something on a map. He didn't look up when she came in but he moved his coat off the chair beside him, which was enough of an invitation.
She sat down.
He slid a cup toward her. It was warm. She wrapped both hands around it and looked at the map he was working on. It was covered in small marks in pencil, routes and distances, numbers she recognized as time calculations. He had been doing this for a while.
"You should sleep," she said.
