Chapter 13 · Untitled Chapter

He had not moved.

The lamp behind him was turned low. The shutters were closed, and the Mabkhara on the ledge had burned down to one thread of smoke that leaned, and leaned back, and did not break. Oud. Under it, the older, drier quiet of a house that had kept its own counsel far longer than any of us had been alive.

I had passed this door my whole life. I had never stood on this side of it with the lock already turned from the corridor.

He said my name once, low, the way a man reads a line he knows by heart. "Maha."

"Yes."

"Nobody is coming through that door tonight."

"I heard what the corridor decided." I kept my voice level. Level was all I had left to spend. "Your house is very thorough."

"It is not the house." He set his hand flat on the back of a chair and left it there. "I turned the lock."

"I know who turned it."

"Good." He did not come closer. "Then you know it was not done to hold you.