The fourth day of silence stretched long and empty. No signals from the inland faction. No messengers. No coded flares along the northern ridges.
The temple kept its quiet heightened watch, but the hours themselves had gone soft around the edges. Aiden felt it in the way the corridors emptied earlier, in the way the evening lamps were lit without urgency.
Elizabeth came to his private rooms after the last of those lamps had been set. She did not knock with the formal rhythm she used in daylight. She simply opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her. The latch settled with a soft click.
She stood there a moment, still in the dark blue robe she wore when the day's formal layers had been set aside. Her hair was down. The line of her shoulders was loose in a way it almost never was when anyone else could see.
"I don't want to talk about the board," she said. "Or the northern houses. Or any of it."
Aiden set aside the reports he had not been reading. "Then we won't."
