The east wing was quiet in the days after the council's decision. Not the quiet of peace—the quiet of a house holding its breath, waiting for the next blow to fall. Paris had chosen these rooms deliberately, far from the council chamber, far from the barracks, far from the eyes that followed Helen wherever she went. But distance could only do so much.
He found her at the window, as he always did now. She spent hours there, looking down at the garden, the bare fig tree, the empty benches. Watching. Waiting. He had asked her once what she was looking for. She had said she wasn't looking for anything. She was just looking.
"Arsini says you've been working through the night again," he said.
"The inventory won't count itself." She didn't turn from the window. "There are forty-three different types of medical supplies in the main storehouse. Antiphus has them organized by wound type—lacerations, fractures, burns, fevers. Did you know that."
"No."
