It was the stillness that frightened me.
Not the Court.
Not Gregory.
Not the Elders.
Not the conspiracies.
Stillness.
Three weeks passed after the Ancestral Hearing without a single major spike.
No sabotage.
No destabilization.
No unexpected summons.
No encrypted warnings.
The hum remained steady.
The resonance circles functioned smoothly.
The Institute operated within its neutrality protocols.
The territories were calm.
It felt… unnatural.
“You’re scanning for threats that aren’t there,” Caden said one evening as we stood in the estate courtyard watching Ash and Ryder chase each other with wooden swords.
“Because threats don’t vanish. They wait.”
“Sometimes they do vanish.”
“Not in our world.”
He didn’t argue.
He just rested his hand lightly at the small of my back, g
