The room remained silent around her.
Natalie kept staring at the name until the letters stopped looking like ink and started looking like provocation.
Goliath.
She looked at the page again.
Then at the closed line of her own notes.
Then back to the name.
Who the hell are you?
And worse: who in this palace already knew?
The answer to the second question was unfortunately easier.
Arik.
Possibly Gabriel.
Certainly Noah, or at least enough to understand why silence had been demanded.
She closed the book with more care than it deserved, slipped the notes inside it, and sat there for one second longer with both palms flat on the cover, letting her thoughts settle into something that looked less like outrage and more like direction.
Noah first.
Not because Arik was not the larger problem.
Because Noah was less likely to turn the conversation into a private war over principle, injury, bloodline, and the exact point at which truth became too dangerous to hand over cleanly.
