Chapter 123

*Aria's POV

The summit was held in the second week of November.

Fenwick again, by quiet consensus — it had become the place where the network's significant conversations happened, the way certain rooms in a house accumulate the weight of the important talks held in them. Oskar had made no ceremony of this but had arranged the meeting room with the particular care he brought to things he understood mattered.

Fourteen coordinators. Both hub leads. Rendell in person for the first time since the compact signing, which meant something — he traveled rarely and deliberately. Gorvan, who had remained in Fenwick through the second residency and showed no...