The house had been awake for twenty minutes before she moved.
She could hear it—the building's morning layer, distant and structural, the sounds of other people starting their days in rooms she could not see. The boiler. The east wing corridor. Someone in the kitchen, earlier than usual, moving with the particular efficiency of a person who knew the layout well enough not to think about it.
Val.
She lay still a moment longer. His arm was loose at her waist—asleep or not, she couldn't tell, and she'd stopped trying to tell the difference between his sleeping and waking stillness because the distinction had proven unreliable. His breathing was even. The room held the specific quality of early morning in a south-facing room: the light coming in warm and unhurried, throwing the desk into relief, catching the edge of the maps she could see from the bed if she tilted her head.
She did not armor against it. That was the information.
