Wren
The fire had burned down to a lower, steadier heat by the time the old man's eyelids began to grow heavy, the tea in his cup gone lukewarm and mostly forgotten between his hands. Wren noticed it before he did, the particular slowness that crept into his blinking, the way his sentences had started trailing a half-beat longer than usual before finding their end.
"You're falling asleep in your chair again, my lord."
"I am not." He said it with the wounded dignity of a man who absolutely was, and knew it, and simply didn't wish to be told so directly. "I'm resting my eyes. There's a difference."
"There is no difference. I've watched you rest your eyes for thirty years. It always ends the same way, with you waking at two in the morning complaining about your neck and blaming the chair."
"The chair is entirely to blame."
"The chair has not changed in thirty years, my lord."
"Then it has had thirty years to improve and has simply refused to." He smiled at his own nonsense, eyes drifting shut again despite himself, and Wren rose without further argument, setting her own cup aside and reaching for the light blanket kept folded over the back of the settee for exactly this purpose.
"Up, then," she said, gently, no real command in it, only the practiced patience of someone who had performed this small ritual more evenings than either of them could easily count. "Bed will do that neck considerably more good than this chair ever has."
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He grumbled something without real conviction, but let her draw him up by the arm regardless, his legs steadier than his earlier drowsiness had suggested, the two of them falling into an easy, familiar rhythm as she walked him the short distance from the fire to the door.
"Thank you for the company tonight, Wren." He said it plainly, without the deflective humour he usually wrapped around anything sincere. "I don't think I properly wanted to be alone with my own thoughts this evening, and you were kind enough not to make me ask outright."
"You never have to ask outright, my lord. I've been listening for it thirty years. I know the shape of the evenings you don't want to spend alone."
"You always have." He paused at the doorway, glancing back once at the fire, at the two empty cups still sitting where they'd left them, at the whole small, warm shape of an evening that had asked nothing extraordinary of either of them and had been, for exactly that reason, one of the better ones he'd had in some time. "Goodnight, Wren."
"Goodnight, my lord." She watched him go, unhurried, down the corridor toward his rooms, and only once his door had clicked softly shut behind him did she turn back to gather the cups, humming faintly to herself some tune she couldn't have named, the fire behind her burning low and contented in the emptied room, the last of its light settling gold and quiet over the chairs where the two of them had sat.