The villa was quiet after midnight. Twelve suites, most of them dark, the mana lanterns along the third floor corridor dimmed to their pale night output. Through the shared wall, Garrett's breathing had the slow, even weight of someone genuinely asleep.
Leo sat at his desk, going through his thoughts and mapping the events that had happened, especially the senior Purist's words on the library steps.
The attacks on Aria won't stop.
A statement of fact delivered with calm. No threat in his intonation. That was almost worse. As if this had been ordained to happen.
Leo set the pen down.
His cognitive sense moved through the villa passively. Garrett's pulse. The structural mana in the stone. The faint signatures behind closed doors. All of it familiar. All of it exactly where it should be.
