Chapter 105

Aria's POV

The formal agreement with Fenwick was signed in March.

Oskar signed with the same composed efficiency he brought to everything, adding one small flourish I hadn't expected: he'd had the settlement's founding charter brought out alongside the institute documents, and after signing he set the two papers next to each other for a moment before separating them.

"We've been building toward something useful since the beginning," he said. "It's good to see it arrive."

Beth folded her copy with the careful deliberateness of someone for whom this moment had been a long time coming. I watched her do it and thought about the forty pages of...