Ayla's POV
My room felt different when I stepped inside.
Not wrong. Just unfamiliar in a way I couldn't quite place. I paused at the threshold and let my eyes move over everything—the bed, the desk, the chair—all of it exactly where it had always been. The same shapes. The same shadows.
Except for the mountain of bags lined up across the floor.
Kael had called a driver to bring them back ahead of us. Too many to carry. Practical decision, simply executed. The bags were already waiting when I got here, arranged in a row that somehow made them look even more like evidence of a day I still didn't know how to hold.
"That's new," Tala said. "Feels like we won the lottery or something. I'm not sure what yet, but something."
I stepped inside and closed the door. The click of it settling int
