It came at a quiet hour.
Not a bad morning — not the ceiling-low kind, not the nausea kind. A quiet evening, the compound at its resting register, Darius in the study finishing the last of the day's work, the bond warm and steady from that direction. I was in the window seat with a book I wasn't reading, which was how I often ended up when I was near something I wasn't quite ready to name.
The fear arrived without announcement.
That was the worst part of it. Not dramatic — not the spike of it that came from actual threat, not the cold specific quality of the Vethara or the alley or any of the moments when the danger was external and identifiable. This was internal. Quiet. The kind that settles in like weather — you don't notice it arriving, you just realize at some point that the air is
