The tenth bell had not rung yet when Aelara heard the gate.
Not the bell itself, the movement before it, the specific sound of the gate mechanism and the guards' shift in posture that happened when someone expected was arriving. She had been standing in the courtyard for twenty minutes already, which she had not planned to do and had done anyway, the unsettled feeling from yesterday not fully gone but changed in quality, less the waiting kind and more the almost kind.
Vaelor was behind her at a distance that said: I am here and this is yours.
The twins were beside him. Caelum in his formal clothes that fit slightly better than they had at the wedding, Lyra in the dress she had decided on before anyone else had started deciding things. Both of them still in the way they were still when something mattered and they knew it.
The gate opened.
