Chapter 210

CHAPTER 52… VALENTINA The chamber did not calm all at once. It never did. Stability, I had learned, did not arrive like silence after a storm. It arrived like breath returning to lungs that had forgotten how to draw air— uneven at first, fragile, earned one moment at a time. Luciano was still crying when the tremors finally eased. Not the sharp cry of pain, but something closer to frustration. Discomfort. A protest against being pulled in too many directions at once. I held him tightly against my chest, rocking him without thinking, my palm pressed flat between his shoulders. His silver flickered in broken pulses now, no longer wild, but not yet settled. It felt like a question still being asked. I lifted my head slowly and looked around the Origin Seat. The Concord stood fractured… Not physically— though the glowing fault line in the stone was impossible to ignore— but ideologically. Their perfect circle was broken by hesitation, by fear, by the sudden realization that they were no lo