The city council chamber of Granada was once a room of velvet and mirrors, frescoed ceilings, and portraits of dead men with powdered wigs. Now it bore the signs of occupation—not by an enemy army, but by purpose. Crates of survey equipment leaned against gilded walls. Blueprints covered mahogany tables. One chandelier had been removed entirely to install a mobile lantern array powered by a coil battery.
Juliette stood beside Lancelot at the head of the table.
Across from them sat the remnants of Granada's traditional authority—merchant lords, clerics, one aging general, and three highborn women whose family crests adorned everything but their eyes, which stayed low. Their expressions were guarded, caught between humiliation and disbelief. What shook them wasn't just the presence of Aragonese leadership—but the presence of their own people, engineers and laborers, now treated as equals, scribbling notes and adjusting charts.
