Orion took the paper. Looked at it. Three specific compounds, their properties, the mechanism of interaction, the safe windows for use.
"You researched this this morning," he said.
"Last night," Doran said. "After I got back from your manor."
Orion looked at the paper again.
"Doran."
"Yeah."
"Come back tomorrow. Same time." He looked up. "And bring anything else you've got on cultivation support."
Something happened in Doran's expression that it very clearly didn't know what to do with. It tried several things and settled on neutral. But the neutral was doing a lot of work covering over something that wasn't neutral at all.
He left without saying anything else.
Luna dropped from the wall the moment he was out of earshot and padded over to Orion. "He's going to be loyal," she said.
"Good."
"In a different way than me," she added, with the specific precision of someone clarifying the terms of something.
"Different situations require different kinds of loyalty," Orion said.
