Kael
Four weeks after Blackstone met Shelly, the castle finally felt quiet. Not empty, because Drake alone made that impossible, but quiet in the way I had almost forgotten a home could be.
Security reports had returned to ordinary problems. Sabrina remained locked away. Evelyn’s network was gone. Shelly was thriving, Blackstone was stable, and nobody had tried to assassinate, kidnap, infiltrate, poison, or overthrow anyone in nearly a month.
I had started to distrust peaceful stretches on principle. Drake had started using them to annoy me recreationally.
“You’re staring at me again.”
I looked up from the report I had stopped reading several minutes ago.
Drake lay across the end of our bed on his stomach, bare feet swinging behind him while he scrolled through something on his phone
