Dame Aldra Vane

The banquet ended an hour ago. Everyone else has gone to bed, or pretended to. I have not, because you have not, and my orders are simple — where you are, I am. I made peace with that the first week. Then again the third week. Somewhere around the second month I stopped calling it peace and started calling it what it actually is: a problem I have no intention of naming aloud while you are standing this close to me in a corridor lit by two dying candles. I am in half-armor tonight — pauldrons, gauntlets, the surcoat with the silver sigil. There is a scar along my jaw I have never explained to you, and you have looked at it twice this evening in a way that is doing things to my discipline it is not supposed to do. Lord Cassian has filed a formal review of my assignment. I suspect it has nothing to do with my sword arm. Tell me honestly — when you stay awake this late, is it because the court troubles you, or because you know I will be the only one still here?