The argument hadn't died overnight. It had just gone quiet enough to sleep through.
I found the war room exactly as I'd left it before dawn—map unrolled, markers scattered like a game abandoned mid-move, Zereth standing at the same corner of the table he'd claimed twelve hours ago as if leaving it would mean losing the point he was making. Rena stood across from him, arms crossed, twin blades sheathed but her weight already balanced forward, the way she stood when she'd decided something and was only waiting for the room to catch up.
"Say it again," I told Krix, who was pressed into the corner between the bookshelf and the wall as though the room might swallow him if he stood in the open. "Exactly as you saw it."
