Aldric arrived before they had finished eating.
Aelara heard him before she saw him. Footsteps in the corridor that were slower than they had been, the particular rhythm of someone who had lived in this building for fifty years and saw no reason to hurry because the building was not going anywhere and neither were they. A knock, precise and unhurried, and then the door opened.
She had seen descriptions of him and heard him in the reports Vaelor had shared with her over two years. She had built a version of him in her head. The version in her head was accurate in the details and completely wrong in the feeling.
