She found his mother's portrait facing the wall.
She turned it around.
He moved it to his study.
Neither of them mentioned it.
Some things don't need to be said.
They just need to be done.
She found it in the small side gallery off the east corridor — the one that was never lit and never visited.
A portrait, canvas facing the wall, leaning against the stone with the particular quality of something placed there deliberately rather than forgotten.
Nora set down her book.
She turned it around.
A woman. Dark-haired, slight, with warm eyes and the expression of someone who found a great deal of things genuinely worth smiling at. Not a formal portrait — not the stiff official kind that lined the main halls. This was smaller. Personal. Painted by someone who knew her.
She looked at the face for a moment.
His mother, she thought. Same jaw. Same quality of attention in the eyes. This is where he got the part of himself that notices small things — he learned it from watching her.
The portrait had been turned to face the wall.
By whom and when, she didn't know. But the frame had gathered dust on the outward-facing side.
She leaned it back against the wall — facing out this time.
Then she picked up her book and went back to the library.
That evening she was reading when she heard Malik's footsteps in the east corridor stop.
A long pause.
Then continue. Slower.
She turned a page and kept reading.
The next morning, passing the west study, she glanced through the open door.
The portrait was on the desk. Propped against the wall behind it, where he would see it every time he looked up from his work.
Good, she thought, and kept walking.