Nobody talked for the first hour.
That was fine with Lucius. He had learned early that silence between people told you more than conversation did if you paid attention to the right things, and right now, the silence between the three of them was telling him quite a lot.
Valeria walked three paces behind and to his right. Not close enough to suggest comfort, not far enough to suggest a retreat. A precise, considered distance that she maintained without appearing to think about it, the way someone maintains posture they've had long enough that it stopped requiring effort.
She made no sound when she moved. Her footfalls didn't register even on the packed dirt of the road, and every time Lucius's divine sense swept passively outward, it returned with the same answer.
A gap in the world shaped exactly like a person.
Seraphine walked on his left and said nothing and looked straight ahead, which would have been convincing if she weren't doing it quite so deliberately.
