“For one night,” Grams says without looking up. “Because I said it. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t,” William answers. He doesn’t move farther in.
We’ve been in this room every day for a week—me learning to breathe until the flare sinks instead of spikes, to feel the hum of wardlight without feeding it. Bella’s homework at the kitchen table. Grams’s voice urging inhale, hold, exhale. The talisman she strung on leather now cool against my collarbone. Familiar. Safe, in the way cliffs are safe when you’ve finally learned where to put your feet.
“Sit,” Grams tells me, patting the chair opposite. “You look wrung out.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, and sit anyway. The air tastes like cedar ash and tea.
Her gaze flicks to William, then back to me. “You did what you needed to do at the Council,” she
