She woke at the third hour.
Not from a dream. Not from noise or movement or any of the external mechanisms that pulled people out of sleep against their will. She woke the way she sometimes woke when her mind had been working without her — cleanly, completely, the transition from sleep to wakefulness so immediate it was as if sleep had simply finished with her and released her back into consciousness with the efficiency of something that had gotten what it needed and had no further use for her presence.
She lay still for a moment.
The chamber was dark in the specific way of the third hour, the deep settled dark that existed after the last lamps had burned out and before the first light had any reason to begin. Kaelis was beside her, breathing with the slow evenness of genuine sleep, and she listened to it for a moment the way she sometimes listened to things that grounded her — the evidence of his presence, the simple fact of him being there and breathing and real.
