"I'd love that," Percy says, because he would. The entire house has a touch of the eccentric to it, at least from the outside; who wouldn't be curious about the interior? And the whole thing is mercifully narrow, far smaller than either the keep or the castle. He's unlikely to receive an invitation to join them, if space is at a premium - and if that's the case, he needn't feel hurt by that fact.

At some point, maybe he'll even be so lucky as to stop thinking about that distance between them: the physical, the emotional, the temporal.

While he's not too unsteady on the stairs, he is slower than usual. As he climbs doggedly to the next floor, he asks, "How long have you lived here?"