ログイン(Mira POV)
I woke up before the light came properly through the window and lay there looking at the ceiling for a while before I accepted that sleep was finished with me.
I put my feet on the cold floor and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my hands in my lap.
I filled the kettle and put it on and stood looking at the print while I waited for it to boil.
Lena had walked three miles in the rain to sit in my kitchen.
I picked up the scr
(Lena POV)I was still standing at the table with the bread when I noticed the butter.It was sitting on the cloth next to the board, a small dish of it, and it had been there the whole time and I had been eating plain bread for ten minutes like someone who had not yet fully woken up, which was accurate but also now slightly embarrassing given that the butter had been right there the entire time.I picked up the knife and used it and Kai watched me from the desk chair."You were eating it plain," he said."I know that," I said."For quite a long time.""I am aware," I said."The butter was there.""Kai.""I am just noting," he said, "that the butter was there and you did not use it and you ate four pieces of bread without it and now you are using it and the difference in your face is noticeable."I looked at him. "What difference.""You look like someone who has just remembered that
(Lena POV)I stayed at the window for a while after he stopped talking, looking at the wet gravel and the guards on the wall and the grey morning sky above the compound, and then I turned around and went back to the chair and sat down and picked up the tea which was fully cold now but I held it anyway.Kai had not moved from the desk chair. HI looked at him.He was looking at the grate."Why didn't you tell me this earlier," I said.He looked up from the grate."Not just this," I said. "Not just the Varden thing and the doctor. All of it. Every time something happened that I needed to know about, I found out sideways. From documents someone else handed me. From things I overheard. From putting pieces together in rooms you had already left." I kept my voice even. "You say you love me. You have said it more than once. And then you walk around carrying things you do not tell me."Kai looked at his cup. He turned
(Lena POV)I ate the bread standing at the table, pulling pieces off the loaf rather than cutting it, which was not how I usually ate bread but the knife was on the far side of the board and I was hungry and not fully awake and it did not seem worth the effort. Kai was at the desk with a cup of something and a set of papers he was reading through, his chair turned slightly sideways so he was not quite facing the desk directly but not quite facing the room either.We had not talked about last night.I pulled off another piece and looked at the papers on his desk. "What are those.""Patrol rotation requests," he said, without looking up. "Three of the eastern sector guards want reassignment. I'm not supposed to be authorizing anything but I'm reading them anyway.""Why do they want reassignment.""They don't say directly. They cite scheduling conflicts and personal circumstances." He turned a page. "Which means they don't want to be on the eastern boundary right now and are being polite
(Lena POV)I woke up reaching for the other side of the bed before I was fully conscious and found the sheets cold and flat under my palm.I lay there for a moment with my hand on the empty side and looked at the ceiling. The fire had died down overnight and the room was cooler than it had been, the pale grey of early morning coming through the gap in the curtains. No sound from the main room. No footsteps, no chair scraping, no sound of the decanter being moved on the side table the way it was when Kai was up and thinking about something he did not want to think about in bed.Gone already, then.I pushed myself up slowly, my shoulders stiff from the cold and from the way I had been lying, curled too far to one side with my arm under me. My hair was loose and tangled and I pushed it back off my face and sat on the edge of the mattress and looked at my feet on the rug for a moment before I stood up.The room was quiet and grey and I was still half-asleep, moving on the slow automatic r
(Mira POV)"I need to talk to you alone," I said.Curtis put the pencil down. Not carefully, just down, the eraser end hitting the table with a small flat sound. He straightened up from where he had been leaning and looked at me and then at Theo."No," he said.I looked at him. "I wasn't asking you, Curtis.""Anything that comes through that door about Lena Graves is movement business," Curtis said. He was not raising his voice. He did not need to. "Which means it's everyone's business in this room. You don't get a private conversation about it.""I get to decide what's mine to say and what isn't," I said.Jake had moved back to the counter and was looking at the floor near his feet. Pete was very still on the bench, his boots finally both on, his hands flat on his thighs.I looked at Theo.He was looking at the table, his cup turned slightly sideways from where it had been before, moved an inch by some
(Mira POV)The door opened before I had finished knocking, which meant someone had heard me on the step. It was Jake, still in yesterday's clothes by the look of them, holding a mug and chewing something. He looked at me and then looked past me down the street and then back at me."Mira," he said."Jake," I said.He stepped back and I came in.The room had four people in it. Theo was at the table with his hands wrapped around a cup, looking at the surface of it. Curtis was standing by the back wall with his arms folded, and Pete was on the bench where he had apparently slept, sitting up now with his hair pressed flat on one side and his boots not yet on. There was another man I knew by face but not well, one of the younger boundary men, sitting in the chair by the window with a map spread across his knees. He looked up when I came in and then looked back at the map.The conversation that had been happening stopped the way co







