She woke before him.
This was not unusual. She had woken before him for eleven years.... the first one moving, the first one at the desk, the first one with his day arranged before his eyes opened. It was the shape of things and she had built herself around it so thoroughly that sleeping past his waking felt, on the rare occasions it happened, like a small wrongness.
She lay still for a moment before rising.
The room was dark. Pre-dawn, the particular dark that came in the hour before the light began its work over the Eiswald tree line. She knew this dark. She had watched it from this room for weeks now, from her corner, from the desk she had claimed in the first three days the way she claimed all spaces she intended to occupy for more than a fortnight.
His breathing was even beside her.
She looked at the ceiling.
Wife.
