The morning after the hearing arrived like the fragile truce it was: tentative, gilded with small mercies, and heavy with the expectation that the world would strike again if it felt brave enough. The house moved in cautious rhythms—lights at certain levels, staff schedules that left no one alone in sensitive corridors, and the coffee brewed just the way Conley liked it. I woke with a faint ache at my ribs where his fingers had been insistently marking me the night before, and the ache felt less like pain than a map. Maps are useful. Maps tell you where you are and how to get somewhere else.
Conley had left before dawn. Court needed him, or perhaps he craved the movement of being elsewhere where the only thing he had to command was law and argument. He kissed my forehead in the dark with
