Somehow, putting Gansey in his jacket just drove home to Henry that Richard Gansey was a few inches shorter than he was. He had to turn the sleeves up. It hung onto his hips. It was just a little big in the shoulders.

There were eyes trained on them, and Henry was trying to not be fundamentally self-conscious about that. This felt like an even more delicate dance than before, then trying to navigate his space without Gansey here. Now, the king had arrived, their heir apparent, and Henry felt infinitely out of place, because he had never, not once, earned this place in this warehouse-home.

He turned away to pour Gansey a cup of coffee. Automatic, as Gansey explained what he'd last experienced. Henry looked at Gansey, asking without asking how he took his coffee. Instead, he said, "No, it's not that your time got messed up, it's that--this place, it doesn't like to keep things exactly in order?"

Gansey mentioned Tulsa again, rain, opera, and Henry ached. He wanted to know this, wanted to know all of it. Instead, he said, "It was fall, when I arrived here. The night after we spoke in Borden House? You were conferring with your court, and I--I was taking out the garbage, when I showed up here. In Darrow. That was in May--just over two months ago, now."