She woke at two in the morning and the other side of the bed was warm and Vaelor was there and everything was fine, and she did not know why she was awake.
She lay still for a moment, listening.
The Citadel was quiet. The specific quiet of deep night, not the early morning quiet that had birds in it, just the full dark silence of a house where everyone was asleep.
Except.
She sat up.
She did not know how she knew. She just knew, the way she knew things sometimes, the specific awareness of another person being awake in a sleeping house, the feeling of someone else's wakefulness reaching through the walls.
She got up carefully and put on the robe on the chair and went out into the corridor.
The light was coming from the sitting room.
Not much light. The small lamp in the corner, the one they left on low sometimes when someone was reading late. She pushed the door open quietly.
Her mother was sitting in the chair by the window.
She had the letter in her hands.
