The scrying crystal on Isole's desk chimed at the seventh hour, three short pulses in the specific pattern that meant a registered Silver Wood contact rather than an ordinary call, and Isole went very still before she'd even looked at it.
"It's her," she said.
Vane was in the doorway of her room, having come up to tell her dinner was ready, and he understood, from the particular quality of her stillness, that dinner was no longer the relevant fact in the house.
"Do you want me to stay," he said.
She considered this longer than the question should have required. "No," she said finally. "Not in the room. This is not a conversation that improves with a witness in it." A pause. "Stay close, though. If that's not a contradiction."
"It's not."
