"Indeed it is." Tristan responded, but his gaze had traveled far into the distance, fixed on something I couldn't see.
I noticed it and turned my own gaze away for the moment. Calling something like that out would cut his train of thought, and whatever he was processing had to be important.
Instead, I started my own.
'Tristan has changed...'
Unlike me. I had changed once and refused to do it again, had dug my heels into whatever ground I found myself standing on. But Tristan... Lira and Clara's deaths must have affected him on an unimaginable scale. After all, he had known them far longer than I had. Years, maybe. A lifetime's worth of trust.
I felt indebted to Lira, and watching her die for nothing had hurt me to the bone. But it was nothing compared to watching my own mother die and how it wrecked my life. Compared to that, I couldn't pretend my grief for Lira matched the hollow place I'd carried for years.
