William woke before dawn in his childhood bedroom, which felt different than it had when he'd last slept in it — not smaller, the way people said rooms felt when you returned to them after growing, but more legible, as if the intervening months had given him a vocabulary for understanding what this space actually was that he hadn't possessed before.
The ceiling he'd stared at through a childhood of insufficient sleep. The window that looked east, toward the gardens, currently showing nothing but the specific darkness of early winter before first light. The desk where he'd studied, years ago, with the particular joyless diligence of someone trying to meet standards that moved whenever he got close to them.
He lay still and thought about his mother's study, and Kai's assessment, and Sera Vane in the capital with a threat against her life and insufficient security by her own choosing, and the venue motion that would buy the remaining network months it would use carefully.
