Eight days.
That's how long the hunters had been silent. Eight days since the last confirmed movement on any of the monitored channels, eight days since a patrol had come back with something worth reporting, eight days of the kind of stillness that should have felt like rest and instead felt like the specific silence before someone speaks.
Three months since the ceasefire — long enough for the trees along the eastern border to shift from bare branches to full canopy, long enough that the war room's coffee stain from Maisie's first overnight had faded to a pale ring on the table.
I'd been in the war room every morning by five. Not because anyone asked me to. Because I couldn't stop waiting for the other thing to happen.
***
Maisie found me on the fourth morning with a mug of tea and a
