This wasn’t how Tara envisioned their reunion. They’d talked over lunch—salad, lobster ravioli in a butter sauce, a glass of wine for each—but the conversation stayed light. New books read. Old friends, roommates, rivals moved on to positions of influence. Val worked with Halcyon Vega at Varkath Nebuchadnezzar, which seemed an odd choice since everyone expected she’d go straight into necromancy. No surprise to anyone Chris Li talked his way into a Judicial clerkship, though both had their doubts about how a Xivai beach bum born and bred would adapt to a year in Trälheim. Tara lost herself so deep in the conversation she could almost ignore the ticking clock in the back of her mind, counting the time she should have been at work. By the time the check came, they had broken through the shell of their shared history to find the silence beneath.

So Tara led them to the Sacred Precinct, to stone-edged gravel paths. Around them, monks and priests strolled in hooded silence. Two old nuns laughed across the grass. A bearded man counted rosary beads on a bench.

“Daffy,” Tara said, changing the subject, and Daphne chuckled at the nickname. “What’s the last thing you remember from the Schools?”

“I don’t know.” She kicked the gravel hard enough to leave a trench; small rocks bounced off the toe of her shoe. Mess up the leather doing that, Tara thought. Daphne’s family had enough nice things she’d never learned to care for them. “It’s all muddled. My last clear memory’s junior year spring break. My junior year, not yours, when we went to the Fangs.”

“That’s clear for you? Blood and hells. I lost a day in that mess.”

“You, me, Julian, Chris, Val, Mike Ngabe. Playing soccer on the beach. You got mad at Mike for something—”

“I fell,” she said. “He laughed at me.”

“So you built an affinity between the ball and his sunglasses. Broke his nose.”

“I didn’t think it would hit him that hard. And I was drunk.”