William sat in the warmth of the room with his team around him and the competition concluded and the things that had needed to be resolved moving toward their resolution, and felt the specific quality of something that had been held tightly for a long time beginning, carefully, to release.
Not finished. There was more — the inquiry, his father, the network his mother was dismantling, the Hollow Court contract that hadn't technically been closed.
Not finished.
But here, tonight, in this specific room, something had shifted.
He picked up his fork.
Across the table, Seraphina was listening to something Mira was saying with the focused attention she brought to things that mattered.
She glanced at him once. Just a glance, brief and clear.
Then she looked back at Mira.
William ate his dinner.
