We didn't sleep. By the time the last of the feast guests had been ushered out with polite excuses about the empress needing rest, the sky outside the war room windows had already begun its slow bruise toward dawn, and none of us had touched a bed.
The table was covered in maps again — the same Temple district maps we'd used to hunt Aeric before the Festival, except this time the marked routes and guard positions felt less like a plan and more like a confession of everything we still didn't know.
"Eleven days isn't enough to rebuild Temple security from nothing," Miraya said, tracing a finger along the courtyard's outer wall. "But it's enough to change what people expect. Aeric planned around the Rite's specific structure — the phases, the timing, the traditional signs. If we alter the Consecration's format—"
