جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

~Selene's POV~The visit has run thirty minutes without either of them announcing it, the unspoken extension settling over the apartment the way these small expansions have started to settle lately, unremarked and undeniable once you noticed them.Miriam takes both twins into the other room not long after Caden arrives, something about wanting to try the new mobile Petra brought over, though Selene suspects the mobile is mostly an excuse. Miriam has been doing this more often these past weeks, finding small, plausible reasons to give Selene and Caden a stretch of time alone together, never commenting on it, never asking what, if anything, happens during it.This is the first time they have actually been alone since Selene left Cresthaven.Caden sits where he usually sits, the chair near the mat, though there is no mat to sit near today, just the two of them and the quiet apartment and the particular weight of a silence that has nowhere left to hide behind a child's presence.Selene do

~Caden's POV~The formal ultimatum arrives through elder council protocol on a Wednesday morning, delivered by courier in a sealed envelope bearing the Ironmere seal, and Caden reads it twice before he allows himself to react to any of it, the way he has trained himself to do with documents that matter.The language catches him first, before the content even fully registers. It is too precise in the wrong places, too fluent with legal terminology that has no business being part of an ordinary border dispute, too familiar with Cresthaven's specific weak points along the eastern line. Dorian Voss is not, by any account Caden has ever received from his own people or from Conrad's intelligence, a particularly sophisticated negotiator. He is a man who fights with numbers and aggression, not with carefully worded legal positioning. This document reads like it was written by someone who has spent years inside Cresthaven's internal politics, someone who knows exactly which pressure points wil

~Selene's POV~Caden arrives at the usual hour, and Selene meets him in the hallway before he has even fully stepped through the door, speaking before he can settle into the visit the way he normally does."I know about the ultimatum," she says. "Rhys told my mother."He stops where he is, just inside the threshold, something shifting briefly across his face before he settles it back into the careful stillness he has learned to bring to these conversations. "I wasn't going to ask you to—""I know you weren't," she says. "That's why I'm bringing it up myself, before you have a chance to decide whether you would have asked or not."He waits, watching her, the way he has learned to wait through these conversations without rushing to fill the silence with reassurance she hasn't actually asked him for."I want you to understand something clearly," she continues. "I'm aware of the political situation. I understand what the twins' unrecognized status could mean for how the council weighs Dor

~Selene's POV~Petra arrives mid-evening the way she usually does, unannounced and already talking before the door is fully open, a bottle of wine in one hand and her phone in the other, scrolling through something she clearly intends to show Selene the moment she sits down.The introduction to Caden, when it happens, is unavoidable.He is still there finishing the visit's allotted time when Petra walks in, and Selene watches the brief flicker cross both their faces, the recognition that this particular meeting has been circling for weeks now and has finally, without much ceremony, arrived."You must be Petra," Caden says, standing."And you must be the husband." Petra sets the wine bottle down on the counter with a thud that suggests she has decided, on principle, not to be overly formal about any of this. "Ex-husband. Sorry. I keep doing that.""You're not the first," Caden says.It is, Selene thinks, the right kind of response, dry without being defensive, acknowledging the awkward

~Caden's POV~He is aware of the distance from the moment Miriam closes the front door behind her.It arrives immediately, a kind of awareness that settles into his chest before he has even consciously registered that he and Selene are alone in the apartment for the first time without the buffer of her mother's quiet presence somewhere nearby in another room. He notices the silence shift, the particular weight of a space that suddenly contains only the two of them and whatever has been building, slowly and without acknowledgment, across these past weeks of careful, measured visits.She suggests coffee. He says yes, though they have both already had coffee that afternoon, the cups still sitting rinsed in the rack from an hour earlier, a fact neither of them mentions out loud. He understands, the moment he agrees, that the coffee is not actually about coffee. It is about giving both of them somewhere practical to stand, some small task to occupy their hands while the air in the room doe