I'd never seen a room go that quiet before, not even in the moments right after my father's confession three weeks ago, and I understood, watching that thin gold thread hang in the air between Mia and Amara, that whatever Thorne had come here expecting, this wasn't it.
"That's not possible," he said, and for the first time his careful composure had genuinely cracked, something raw and unguarded showing through underneath it. "The binding doesn't persist. It fades. Every account—"
"Every account you have access to," Amara said, and there was something dangerous in her voice now, quiet and precise. "You've read the companion file. You know what it says about mechanism and inheritance. Did it say anything at all about what happens when the working is offered freely instead of drawn out by t
