Eve held his gaze.
"That's it?" she said.
"That's everything," he said.
She looked back out the window.
She understood that. She understood it completely. She had spent so long moving from one crisis to the next that she had almost forgotten what the thing she was fighting for actually looked like. What it felt like to just have it. Quietly. Without anyone trying to take it away.
"Silas," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"I think I'm happy," she said. "I'm not sure I've said that out loud before. About my life." She paused. "I think this is what that is."
He looked at her.
His expression was quiet and warm and entirely genuine. No performance in it. Just Silas, feeling something and letting her see it.
"Good," he said.
Just that one word.
But the way he said it, like her happiness was something he had been quietly working toward for a very long time and was glad to see arrive, made it land heavier than a paragraph ever could.
***
She found Damian in his study at noon.
