The silence that followed Nico’s removal from Medici Hall was not one of peace. It was the heavy, charged quiet of a vacuum, waiting to be filled. The Elders departed quickly, their movements stiff, avoiding my eyes as if I were now a force of nature they had just unleashed and did not fully understand. They had made a deal with the storm to get rid of the flood, and now they had to live with the lightning.
Dante and I returned to the command center in his estate. The air inside felt different, the tactical screens and glowing maps no longer representing a campaign of insurgency, but the administrative tools of a new regime. The war was over. The mopping up had begun.
I didn’t feel triumph. I didn’t feel relief. I felt a profound and unsettling stillness, the way a limb feels after a tou
