Orion doesn’t move his hand away. Silas doesn’t pretend he didn’t notice. Neither of them rushes to patch the moment back into something polite.
So I don’t either.
I let the silence settle. Let it do its work.
Then I lean forward and tap the medallion with one finger—calm, deliberate, like my pulse didn’t just trip over itself.
“Walk me through the evidence pile,” I say. “Start from the beginning. Like you’d brief a council that already hates you.”
Silas’s mouth twitches. “You’d enjoy that.”
“I would,” I admit. “But I’m serious.”
Orion inhales once—slow, controlled—resetting into command the way he does when his body threatens to betray him.
“All right,” he says. “We build it clean.”
He drags the medallion closer, turns it until the slanted light catches the shallow etching.
“Thi
