Chapter 120

Aria's POV

I gave her the document on a Sunday morning.

Not with ceremony — she'd said herself that the best conditions felt like nothing from the inside, and she'd meant it as observation but it was also instruction. I set it on the kitchen table before she came down, the pages stacked and bound simply with the cord I'd used for the working draft. No inscription. Nothing that would weight the giving more than the receiving required.

She came downstairs in the unhurried way of Sunday mornings and saw it immediately.

She stood for a moment looking at it from across the kitchen. Then she came to...