She did not sleep that night.
Auriel had woken twice, fed, and settled again, but Lin Yue lay in the dark, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, her phone on the pillow beside her.
She had checked it a dozen times.
No messages.
No calls.
Uriel had said he would be back by evening, but evening had come and gone, and the house was quiet, and he was not here.
She told herself he was busy.
The Zephorian situation.
The military council.
A hundred things that needed his attention more than she did. But the silence from his phone was louder than any explanation he could have given.
[You should sleep. Tomorrow will be long.]
"I know."
But she did not close her eyes. She listened to the house settling around her, the creak of old wood.
She thought about the locked storeroom, the key that was not in the system, the things that had been taken and never returned.
