Then he turns back to them.
“Effective immediately,” he says, his voice sharpening again, gaining structure, authority settling fully into place, “human laborers are under my protection.”
This time the reaction is different.
Not just resistance.
Disruption.
“You’re destabilizing the estate,” someone snaps.
“I’m correcting it,” Verr replies.
“They are resources.”
“They are people.”
The words cut clean, leaving no space between what was and what will be.
“You will treat them as such,” he continues, his gaze sweeping the room once more, “or you will answer to me.”
No one answers.
But the silence?—
Shifts.
And this time, it holds.
My gaze drifts,just briefly, to the edge of the chamber where Skot would have stood, his presence usually cutting through moments like this with a precision that made everything sharper.
He isn’t there.
But the absence?—
Feels deliberate.
Earned.
I tighten my grip on Verr’s hand.
“Don’t waste it,” I murmur.
His grip tightens back.
“I won’t.”
40
VERR
The gardens do not announce that anything has changed, and yet the difference settles into me the moment I step onto the stone path, as immediate and undeniable as the shift in air against my skin, as though the space itself recognizes that something fundamental has altered even if its structure remains untouched.
The same layered scents linger where they always have—damp earth turned recently beneath careful hands, the faint sweetness of night-blooming flora opening slowly under filtered light, and beneath it all the cool mineral trace of stone that has held its shape longer than any living thing rooted here—but now those scents carry weight, memory threading through them in a way that alters how they settle in my lungs, grounding each breath in something that extends beyond the present moment.
The trees stretch upward in their usual deliberate patterns, long-limbed and patient, their branches casting fractured shadows across the path where light slips through in narrow, shifting bands, yet the space no longer feels ornamental or contained in the way it once did; it feels inhabited, not bypresence alone, but by what has already passed through it and refused to disappear.
I slow just past the threshold without consciously choosing to do so, the faint crunch of gravel giving way beneath my boots as the sound carries farther than it should in the quiet, and for a moment I allow the stillness to settle fully instead of moving through it, letting the absence of pressure replace the tension that defined every step within the chamber. This silence does not constrict or demand; it expands, anchoring rather than compressing, giving space for thought to form without forcing it into sharp edges.
