To the Chantry, they're one and the same even the rifters that do less magic than Ness— but she notes as much before Gwenaëlle can point it out, so the moment settles into a thing it feels she doesn't need to hammer home further. She could press the point of what's normal, anyway, none of us are going to get to be,

she doesn't. Ness knows. They all wish for better worlds.

So, instead,

“Most months,” she says, feeling the familiar way her throat tightens to think of them and their letters. Every letter feels like it might be the last one. She wants to think he'd tell her. She tries to imagine herself in his shoes, and how hard it is even to be at this distance from it, and sometimes she thinks she'll just go to them, and stay a while, and she never does. “He and my aunt, they left Riftwatch to ... my aunt is in lyrium decline,”

steadily, steadily,

“so they live out where they can manage for themselves. Handy, in case we need to hide in the basement of a cottage in the woods for some reason.”