Before They Choose
The counting house's back office is small and plain, lit by a single lamp Theo has already turned low before I arrive, and when I push the door open and see him standing there thinner than I remember, a new wariness in his shoulders that wasn't there before Brask dismissed him, but unmistakably, achingly himself, every careful thing I planned to say on the walk over dissolves entirely. I simply cross the room and hold onto him as though letting go might undo the fragile miracle of being in the same room again at all.