Four days had passed since the study lamp, since his hand beside hers, since the word she hadn't needed to say.
The house had found its rhythm again in the way houses did after violence: not by forgetting it, but by absorbing it into the structure. New guard rotation, new access protocols, Gabriel's roster rebuilt from the inside out. The legacy panels in the basement had been pulled and replaced with current hardware — Matteo oversaw it personally, Lucian tested it twice. The war room map had acquired new pins. The building moved the way it always moved, purposefully, without sentiment, and Raven let it carry her along with her.
