Killian woke the way a diver surfaces, slowly, with the sense of having been somewhere very deep.
The ceiling was cream-colored, with a plaster medallion at the center and a faint shimmer of afternoon light that moved across it. He did not know it. He lay still and listened to his own body while it reported in. The headache was gone. So was the hollow ache behind his eyes, and the trembling in his hands. When he flexed his fingers, they closed into a fist with no argument.
Then the room arrived all at once. Sage-green walls. A chair with a folded blanket over its arm. Tall black-framed windows with a garden beyond them, and a faint, steady smell of something simmering downstairs. Barley, he thought, and carrots, and a little pepper.
Penelope's house. Whenever he came into the space, this was where he slept, and it had begun to feel like somewhere he was allowed to stay.
