Introducing eight people to each other in the middle of a mountain corridor produced, predictably, a certain amount of friction.
Garrett did not lower his guard around Alex for the better part of an hour, tracking him with the specific wariness of someone who had spent a career assuming golden light meant complications rather than safety. Darius simply studied him, silent, cataloguing. Helena asked him four rapid questions about the Thornwick financial trail before he had finished being introduced to everyone else, and did not apologize for the sequencing.
Fedora watched him the longest.
'You read differently than I expected,' she said, when the formation had reassembled and begun moving again, Alex now walking near the center rather than approaching from outside it.
'Differently how.'
