It was a Sunday in January — grey, cold, the kind of morning that compressed the compound's population indoors and made the archive warm and the kitchen warmer.
Sera was in the study with territorial correspondence when the bond shifted.
Not the alarm — she'd know the alarm anywhere, still, after all these years. Not the crisis quality. Something different. The third frequency doing something she'd felt only a handful of times before, the gift extending with the specific quality of intention rather than accident.
Rowan was doing something.
Deliberately.
Sera set down the correspondence.
She didn't move toward the nursery. She waited, the bond telling her enough — Rowan was fine, not distressed, not extending further than she should. The quality was controlled in a way the corridor in
