Chapter 203

CHAPTER 45… VALENTINA The consequences did not arrive all at once. They came unevenly, like fractures spreading through glass— silent at first, then impossible to ignore. By nightfall, the palace had stopped pretending nothing had changed. I felt it in the way the wards adjusted themselves without instruction, tightening not in defense, but in recognition. The ancient mechanisms embedded in stone and blood were no longer waiting for threat assessment. They were responding to alignment. To choice. Luciano slept through it all. That unsettled me more than any alarm would have. He lay stretched across the center of the bed, one small hand fisted in the sheets, the other resting against my arm as though he had decided I was a fixed point. His silver was quiet— too quiet. no longer reactive to distant pressure, but settled deep beneath his skin, like a current that had found its channel. He was no longer echoing danger. He was anchoring it. I brushed my fingers through his hair, slow and de