NEVA POV
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Maren's territory was beautiful in a way I hadn't expected — old stone buildings softened by decades of careful gardens, the specific settled elegance of a place that had been thoughtfully built rather than merely acquired.
The whole compound traveled together for the ceremony, and I watched Ryke take in Maren's territory with an expression that had shifted, since our conversation weeks ago, from wary resistance into something like genuine curiosity.
"She built this herself," he said, watching Maren move through the gathering crowd with the specific comfortable authority of someone entirely at home in her own domain. "Thirty years of careful work."
"Similar to what you built at Ashveil," I said. "Just a different shape."
He considered that, something shifting further in
