Chapter 25: Rook's Confession, Annotated

What he said first was his name.

Not "Rook" — he let that one go without ceremony, which itself told me something about how long he had been ready for this moment, whether he had known it consciously or not. He said "Edric," quietly, in the way a man might say the name of a place he left at sixteen and has not returned to. Testing the weight of it. Finding it heavier than expected, or perhaps exactly as heavy as he had always known it would be.

"Edric Vane," he said. "Yes."