The room was quiet, still, in the way that made you want to fidget at times. From downstairs, faintly, she could hear the particular quality of silence that meant Silas had fallen asleep, which she had estimated at four minutes and had been correct about.
"You're not sleeping," she said finally, deciding that enough time had passed since her arrival.
Silence.
"Your breathing is wrong for sleeping," she said. "It's too deliberate."
A long pause.
"Go away, Amari," Aris said, into the wall, voice small.
"I brought donuts."
Another pause, this one with a slightly different texture.
"What kind," he said.
"From that one place in the pink district that you like."
She had looked this up. Lyra had told her, in the efficient shorthand they had developed over the past weeks, in the same message that had said;
he's upstairs, he probably won't say so but company would help.
