Noah's return halted the search party Valen had been twenty minutes from organizing.
He was standing in the Saltback's common room with a map of the surrounding coastline spread across the table when Noah walked through the door, and the look that crossed his face was not relief exactly. Something more complicated than relief, with edges to it.
"Sit down," Valen said, his voice carrying the specific flatness of someone who had been managing their own worry for several hours and had converted it entirely into controlled anger.
Noah sat.
Valen looked at him for a long moment, taking inventory the way a man did when he was confirming something was still intact before deciding how to feel about the fact that it had been missing. His eyes moved across the burn marks on Noah's chest, the absence of a shirt, the general condition of someone who had spent a night somewhere that was not a bed.
"Account," Valen said.
