Chapter 302 - Chapter 301 - The Quiet Before the Guests

The first full morning on the island arrived under a pale, clean sky that seemed to have been washed overnight. Ren woke before the sun had properly lifted itself above the sea, as he often did, though this time the quiet felt different. It was not the tense quiet of a city home braced against intrusion, nor the clinical quiet of a hospital corridor waiting for its next emergency. This was the hush of a place that knew it was safe. He lay still for a moment, listening to the soft rise and fall of Fang's breathing beside him, the faint rustle of the curtains moving in the sea breeze, and the distant, almost musical sound of water meeting the shore below the cliff.