The silence after the battle did not feel peaceful.
It felt watchful.
Ren could sense it in the way the mansion seemed to hold itself together a fraction too tightly as they climbed from the hidden chamber, in the way the air in the service passage remained cool but no longer empty, in the way Fang kept glancing over his shoulder as though expecting the sealed route to twitch open behind them. Even Wolf, usually the least sentimental of them, had gone alertly quiet. Pax walked with his hands behind his back and his jaw set, thinking in long, clipped lines that were probably already becoming a dozen contingency plans.
Above them, the house was steady. The wards still hummed. Somewhere on the upper floor, one of the children laughed, the sound faint but real enough to cut through the tension like sunlight through a crack in heavy cloud.
Ren felt the sound reach him first.
