The last quest window disappeared while Eli was looking past it.
It had remained at the edge of his sight after the Heir mechanism went, a broken notice with no task he could complete and no route he meant to follow. He had been too tired beside the winch to decide whether it was a residual display or his own expectation carrying the shape after its source had failed. Now the pale edge thinned, broke into a line, and vanished.
He waited for the next one.
Nothing appeared.
“Eli.”
Tessa knelt beside the folded coat beneath his head. He could see a stain across her cuff, someone else’s blood dried into the seam. He wanted to ask whether she had rested at all and could not make the question come quickly enough.
“Look at me.”
He did. Her expression changed, not with relief, with the concentration of someone who had not yet decided what his silence meant.
