She had not planned to come back this way.
She had not planned to come back at all, which was the honest version of it, the one she had been sitting with for the duration of the ride back from Kharzun Vale with the stars above her and the cold night air finding every gap in her silk wrap and the horse beneath her moving forward because horses did not have the option of not moving forward and she had envied that briefly.
But here she was.
Not inside. Not at the gate. Not anywhere that could be called a return in any official sense of the word. She was on the roof of an abandoned structure at the edge of the inner realm, a building that had been empty long enough that the roof had become something else — a platform, almost, open to the sky, with a view of the outer wall that was close enough to see the details of it and far enough to not be seen herself.
She had found it by accident.
Or the thing that felt like accident which was usually just instinct wearing a disguise.
