# Chapter 124

Aria's POV

The summit ended on a Friday.

People dispersed across the weekend, the particular quality of departure that followed a gathering where something real had happened — not reluctance exactly, more like the measured leave-taking of people carrying something they hadn't arrived with and wanting to be careful with it on the journey home.

Rendell left Saturday morning. He shook my hand at the Fenwick settlement boundary in the same way he always had — direct, complete, the handshake of someone for whom the gesture was not social ritual but genuine acknowledgment.

"The compact is producing more than I projected," he said.

"Than I projected too."...