I did not sleep.
I want to be clear about how unusual that is.
I have slept through a border evacuation.
I have slept sitting upright in a moving cart with a broken wrist.
At eleven years old I slept through the second half of a siege drill and was awarded a formal reprimand that Valerian framed and hung in the training room, where I assume it still is.
Sleep has never once required my cooperation.
That night it declined to arrive at all.
I lay in the dark in Sanctuary with Dream Haven under my head and my ribs complaining every time I shifted, and listened to the building settle, and did the thing I have spent five years training myself not to do, which is think about a conversation before having it.
'You're awake.'
[I noticed.]
'That wasn't a question.'
[It wasn't an answer.]
The ceiling here had fewer tiles than the infirmary.
I counted them anyway.
Ninety-four, and one in the corner that had been replaced at some point by someone who had not matched the colour.
