Ravenna's POV
The news traveled faster than I expected.
By the time Valkor and I left the east corridor meeting room separately — him first, then me, fifteen minutes later, because some habits of discretion were not yet fully unnecessary — the building had already changed its temperature. I felt it in the way people looked at me. Not the way they had looked at me when I walked in this morning, that careful, sideways surveillance of someone they expected to watch fall. This was different. This was the calibration of people who had prepared for one outcome and received another and were now quietly deciding what their position had always been.
I recognized that look. I had been on the other side of it before.
Elder Constance intercepted me near the main entrance with the precise timing of
