Chapter 81

Aria's POV

The conversation worth continuing lasted three days.

Not because we were slow. Because the thing we were trying to build in language was genuinely new and new things require more words before they require fewer. We were feeling the shape of something neither of us had held before, finding where it was solid and where it gave, learning which parts could bear weight and which parts were still possibility rather than structure.

Rendell's lead advisor was a woman named Thessa. She had the quality of someone who had spent years translating between people who thought in different registers — patient with imprecision, relentless about clarity, capable...