Rowan slept for twenty-three hours.
Not from exhaustion alone—but from spiritual dissonance, as Kairis called it. His body had housed too many voices, his mind had stood in too many places between here and the ancestral. It wasn’t rest. It was recovery.
Quinn sat beside him the entire time.
He didn’t eat. Didn’t move. Barely blinked.
He just watched his son’s chest rise and fall beneath the blanket Jace had wrapped around him, a hand always resting over his ribs like he could hold the heartbeat there with sheer will.
Jace stayed close, too.
But not too close.
He paced sometimes. Sat against the cabin wall at others. Rested his head in his hands and whispered things Quinn couldn’t hear—maybe didn’t want to.
The Hollow Tree had stopped glowing.
But it hadn’t gone quiet.
Sometimes Q
