And Caspian — who was not a warm man, who had no particular gift for tenderness and knew it — did the only thing that could have reached her.

He did not push.

He did not demand that she trust him, or perform gratitude, or hurry up and heal on a schedule that would make him comfortable.

He simply kept his word, one small promise at a time, day after day, and let the evidence accumulate the way evidence does, until one morning she noticed she had stopped bracing.

It was not a dramatic recovery.

There was no single moment of breakthrough.