NEVA POV
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Lera stayed at the compound for a week.
Not as a retreat from Caius exactly — he called every day, careful and consistent, exactly the slow proof he'd promised — but because she needed, she told me, somewhere neutral to think, somewhere that wasn't the house they'd built together, still carrying the specific charge of that terrible night.
I found her most mornings in the garden with Reine, the two of them tending tomatoes in a companionable silence that seemed to be doing more good than any conversation could have managed. Two women processing betrayal of very different shapes and sizes, side by side, hands in the same earth.
"How's Reine," Lera asked me one afternoon, watching her sister-in-arms work a few rows down.
"Healing," I said. "Slowly. She hasn't spoken to Corv
