Note: If you read the previous chapter before 19:00 US ET on 3/5/24, please go back and re-read, as Rowan insisted I change some thi things. He is my boss.
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Rowan never got his hug.
Before he could do much more than open his front door, a fragment of a prayer slipped past the mental defenses he kept in place for his own sanity, distracting him from the sight of Loma returning the books that had been scattered across his kitchen floor to the bookshelf when she was supposed to be resting.
When Loma noticed him frozen in the doorway, she shoved one last book on the shelf then tucked her hands into the folds of her skirt as if that would somehow make him and Alaric forget that they'd been rubbed raw with Disorder.
