Thornwick hadn't changed as much as Alex expected.
He'd braced for it to look different, the way a place always looks different once you've decided it means something to you. But the docks still smelled like tar and low tide. The market square still had the same crooked awning over the fishmonger's stall, patched twice since he'd last stood here. Even the burned block near the old warehouse district had been rebuilt in the same clumsy, functional style the rest of the city favored, as if the fire had never happened.
He'd been here two years ago. He was eighteen then too, in the way that mattered — new to the title, new to the light that hadn't yet learned to sit comfortably on him. He remembered walking through this square for the first time, the crowd parting, some of them kneeling, and thinking: this is what it's supposed to feel like.
He was twenty now. The light sat easier. Everything else sat harder.
