~LYRA'S POV~
I woke up thinking about the garden.
Not the blood moon. Not the war. Not the thing sitting on the other side of tomorrow. Just the garden, Kael's hand in my hair, the warmth of his chest under my palm, the way he'd said we'll be here with that particular certainty of his that I'd learned to trust.
I sat with it for a moment, this feeling that wasn't clean. Something close to shame, though shame wasn't quite right. Something closer to the vulnerability that came after doing a thing you'd been careful not to do, when you weren't certain yet whether careful had been the right instinct. And underneath that, something else, quieter, warmer. Something that wasn't going anywhere.
I got dressed and let the day take over.
—
Mira found me just after breakfast, which meant she'd been waiting. She had a folder under her arm, thick, well-used, the kind of document that had been handled many times in a short period.
