Chapter 110

Aria's POV

She returned the document three days later.

Not immediately — she'd held it for three days, which told me she'd read it more than once. The pages had been handled carefully, no creases, no marks, held with the same respect she gave the beetle books. She set it on my desk with the deliberateness of someone returning something significant rather than simply finished with.

Then she sat down across from me.

I waited.

She'd come with things to say. The quality of her stillness was preparatory rather than uncertain.

"There are parts I didn't fully understand," she said. "The section about governance structures. Some of the...