Valerica found them in the second-floor sitting room with a pot of tea already going cold between them, Ashe cleaning a blade that didn't need cleaning and Isole reading a page she'd read three times without absorbing it, and she came in without knocking, the way she'd started doing sometime after the convocation, as if the villa had finally become a place she didn't need permission to enter.
"You've been avoiding the kitchen," Valerica said to Isole.
"Mara said everything that needed saying yesterday. I don't need it repeated."
"That's not what I meant." Valerica sat down uninvited, which was, from her, a form of care. "You've been avoiding the kitchen because it's the room where everyone can see your face. Up here it's just the two of them, and they already know."
