Adrian POV
The room changed when the voices stopped. It wasn't safe, just quieter, like a battlefield after the last shots have been fired.
Quinn stood in the middle, his hands relaxed at his sides, watching the last bits of smoke fade away above the cracked floor.
"You're not fighting anymore," I said.
"No." He didn't look at me. "There's nothing left to fight for. She just let go of the only thing I ever built that mattered, and she did it without hating me for it. That's worse than if she had."
"You expected hatred."
"I expected consequences that made sense to me." He almost laughed. "This doesn't."
Elena stayed close to me, drained in a way I recognized from my own worst nights, the particular exhaustion of having given more of yourself than you had to spare.
Tiffany had gone quiet too, watching her father the way you watch something you're not sure is still standing on purpose or just hasn't fallen yet.
