Chapter 30. You Had Six Years, Son

Weston's POV

I knew she was gone before anyone told me.

The bond had been a cord between us since Lowmoor, sometimes slack, sometimes tight, always there. At a quarter to one in the morning I woke in my bed in the east wing with my heart going like a drum, and the cord was pulled so tight and so thin that I thought for a second it had snapped.

It hadn't. It was just very long now. Stretched east, and getting longer.

I was in the kitchen by one. The lamp was out. The flour sacks were against the wall where they always were, and her corner by the pot sink was scrubbed down to the steel, the way she left a kitchen when she didn't mean to come back to it. Her knives were gone.

Hollis was at the center range in his undershirt, though he had no reason in the world to be awake. He