Christian watched the shadows dance between trees as the transport rumbled down what passed for a road, thinking how deceptively normal the world still looked from here—all green canopy and dappled sunlight, nature's charade of permanence when everything, everything was gossamer-thin and unraveling. Forty minutes to the mansion, then twenty more to the mountain's base. An hour. Such a human measurement, meaningless to someone who'd watched empires crumble in slow time-lapse, who'd seen forests grow from seedlings to giants in the blink of an immortal eye, yet now—now—this hour might be the one that mattered most.
Daisy sat opposite him, the Moon's Tear pulsating against her throat with quicksilver urgency. Her hand rested on her abdomen where two impossible lives grew—one frost, one light
