Something shifted in Satou's chest.
"I never got to know that side of him," he said.
"No," Morgana said. "You knew him in crisis. Crisis contexts compress everything into function. The other parts come out in the long evenings." She paused. "I think he liked you. Not the easy liking of allies with aligned interests. The more specific kind." She looked at him. "He called you something I thought was telling. In one of our late conversations, when your name came up. He called you the kind of lord that made him think the realm might be going in a better direction than he'd assumed."
Satou didn't say anything.
"That was high praise from him," Morgana said. "He didn't assign positive trajectory assessments easily."
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