They pulled back.
Not far.
Just enough to breathe.
The city below.
The terrace.
The last of the evening light catching the buildings across.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
The bond between them was different now.
Not the patient warmth.
Not the manageable pull.
Something that had found its shape.
The specific quality of something that had been moving toward a thing for a long time and had arrived.
---
Damian's section.
His heart was doing something architectural.
Complicated structural things that he did not have engineering language for.
He looked at Kendrick.
Right there.
Close.
Looking back at him with an expression he had no name for except: real.
This was the problem with letting someone past the wall.
The wall was the easy part.
He had built the wall at nineteen and maintained it through years of careful practice.
He was good at the wall.
What came after the wall was harder.
