I go to the garden because I need air.
That is the honest reason. Not strategy, not purpose — just the particular suffocation of a palace that has been closing in for several days now, the walls too known, the corridors too familiar, the weight of everything that has happened pressing on the inside of my chest in a way that requires open sky to manage.
Fenris told me this morning that my recovery is progressing well, that the physical effects of the shift are resolving, that I am technically cleared to move through the palace without restriction.
What Fenris did not address is the other kind of recovery. The kind that does not show up in vitals.
The east garden is quiet at this hour — mid-afternoon, the palace staff occupied elsewhere, the guards on their rotation. I find the bench near the fountain where Jason sat this morning and I sit on it and I tip my head back and I let the sky be large above me for a moment.
