#Chapter 133: Robert's Closure

Ember The afternoon is warm enough to take Clara outside, so we settle in the smaller garden off the east wing, where she crouches near the fountain and narrates a diplomatic crisis involving what may or may not be a frog. I'm watching her when Jake appears at the garden gate and tells me Robert is here to see me. My second mate, the one who chose Bianca, the man whose rejection once felt like proof that I was built wrong. I wait for the old flinch and find only worn-down curiosity. "Tell him to leave," Nara says, but I find I'm not afraid of this conversation anymore, and that is what makes me say yes. I crouch beside Clara and tell her to play by the fountain for a few minutes. She looks at the man now standing at the gate, then back at me, and asks if he's a friend. I tell her no, only someone I used to know, and she accepts this before going back to her frog. Robert looks different than I remember: thinner, tired, his guard uniform hanging looser than it should, sh