Saturday arrives with Théo and Sera in the same vehicle.
Not planned, Celeste and Reves coordinated without telling either child, which means two adults who have never been in the same room managed a logistical arrangement through legal representatives and a mutual understanding that fourteen years olds benefit from arriving somewhere new alongside someone familiar rather than alone. Théo knows the compound. Sera does not. The arrangement is sensible and both parents executed it without ceremony.
Théo gets out first.
He looks at the compound with the ease of a boy who has been here six times now and has located himself in it, the north wing room, the training ground he watches from the window, the communal table, the courtyard bird he asks about every visit with the specific, ongoing in
