Geoffrey found me on the castle wall that evening, which had become a habit for both of us without formal acknowledgment. The sun was setting over the river in shades of amber and rose, and I was leaning against the crenellation watching a heron stand motionless in the shallows below.
I recognized Geoffrey by his footsteps before he spoke. That realization felt dangerous in ways I preferred not to examine too closely.
“My brother spoke with me,” Geoffrey said as he came to stand beside me. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I was aware of his warmth.
“About the psalter?”
“About you.” He paused. “He said you were more reasonable than expected.”
“High praise from your brother.”
“The highest available.”
I heard the dry humor in his voice and felt it settle somewhere inconveniently warm beneath my ribs.
“He also said you told him wanting to go backward and fix things was usually a mistake.”
“I did.”
“Do you believe that?”
I watched the heron standing below us.
“Both,” I admitted. “I believe it and I was managing him.”
“You do that often,” Geoffrey observed. “Hold two truths simultaneously.”
“It’s a survival skill where I come from.”
“It’s one here as well.”
His voice had changed slightly, less formal now.
“Do you regret it?” he asked suddenly. “Coming here.”
“I didn’t choose to come here.”
“I know. But now that you are here.”
The heron lifted abruptly from the water, wings spreading silently against the fading light.
I watched it disappear upriver. “Ask me something easier.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I turned toward him then, which immediately felt like a tactical error.
He was watching me with that focused attention he brought to everything, and in the evening light his eyes looked impossibly grey, like winter clouds over water.
“I don’t know if I regret it,” I admitted quietly. “I’m terrified most of the time. I miss things from my own world that I can’t properly explain to you. And I know this…”
I gestured vaguely toward the castle, the river, the fading sky.
“This is the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to anyone, and half the time I’m too frightened to appreciate it.”
“Half?”
