THE REVELATION did not explode inside Lily.
It folded.
It pressed inward, neat and suffocating, like breath trapped behind ribs that refused to expand. Cassian’s words replayed without sound, a silent film she could not stop watching. Biological. Blood. Inheritance. Not metaphor. Not insult. Fact.
She did not cry.
She sat in the narrow chair beside the operating wing, hands folded so tightly her fingers tingled. The smell of antiseptic burned her nose. The lights above were too bright, too clean. Everything here was designed to erase mess. To pretend blood could be washed away.
Ronan had been rushed through those doors less than an hour ago.
She watched the swinging panels as if they might open on their own and return him whole. She could not bring herself to imagine what was happeni
