They gathered on a Sunday.
Not the full table — not Rowan, not Aldis's family, not the people who were part of the compound but not the Ledger's core work. Just the people who'd built it: Sera, Darius, Cole, Neva, Maren, Tavri, Zane, Iris. Lena, because the Quickening was part of what the Ledger found and protected and she deserved to be in any room that examined what the Ledger was doing. Petra, because Petra had been the one to name the cost of doing difficult work without accounting for it, and that felt like the right instinct to have present.
Zane read the translation of Asha's third book, same as he'd read it to Sera and Darius.
The room received it differently than Sera had expected.
Tavri went still partway through — not the focused still of attention, the specific still of rec
