Beatrice POV
Because I already knew.
Someone close to me - someone who had listened, who had agreed, who had nodded quietly while I spoke truths they were afraid to claim was about to step forward.
Not to accuse.
But to withdraw the statement.
Publicly.
And when they did, it wouldn't just undermine me.
It would justify everything that had just been done.
I exhaled slowly.
Witnesses don't get protected.
They get positioned.
And now, with Aurora's name attached to my narrowing, the next move wouldn't be about me at all.
It would be about whether I was willing to let her take the fall.
*****
Aurora's POV
Before
I felt it before I saw the summons.
The mountain was wrong.
Not unstable - off-rhythm. Like a heartbeat that skipped occasionally, not enough to alarm but enough to notice if you were listening closely. I had been listening for weeks now, tracking the subtle dissonance between my restraint doctrine and the system's interpretation of it.
