Chapter 25: Crossing The Threshold

Rex chewed, swallowed, looked at the pyramid, and in a smooth motion took another spoonful. The movements were smooth and unhurried and completely ordinary for a well-raised noble boy eating breakfast on an expedition.

I could not find anything wrong with the way he was sitting, moving, or breathing.

And yet, there was this sort of stillness around him that I did not know how to describe precisely, and I was not sure I was seeing it rather than inventing it, but there was a quality to how Rex occupied space at this hour of the morning that was not quite the same as how Bari or Dara occupied it. A certain economy. The small constant adjustments that most bodies made without awareness, the shift of weight on a crate that was slightly uncomfortable, the small correction of posture against the angle of the morning light, were less pronounced in him. Not absent, just less pronounced.

...