Chapter 12: Dara's Interrogation and Cassian's Silence

The water-carrying took twenty minutes. I made three trips, which was one more than necessary, and I did it slowly, which meant I was present at the fire when Dara came back from the river.

She had been gone a long time. I had noticed. I suspect everyone had noticed, in the way that a fellowship in its second week of proximity notices everything about everyone without being willing to say so aloud. When she came back her eyes were dry, which told me more about the cost of that than wet eyes would have. She had her cloak pulled to the throat despite the morning having turned mild, and she walked with the particular set of her shoulders that I had come to understand meant she had made a decision and was now carrying it toward its execution the way she carried a sword — with the comfortable certainty of a person who does not doubt their grip.

She went straight to Seraphine.