"Sometimes family is not chosen by blood, but by the chaos you cannot imagine living without."
The meeting had ended in a mess of laughter and bickering, Rivan dragging Kael by the sleeve, Nyra rolling her eyes so hard I half-feared they would get stuck, and Marcus and Juno trading quips sharp enough to cut parchment. Niko, of course, had slipped away before anyone realized she was gone, her absence marked only by the faintest shimmer in the air where her magic had brushed against us, and then the door closed, silence falling over the chamber like a sigh.
For a long moment, I just stood there. My head tipped back against the chair, my fingers still curled around the edge of the table where moments before I had been half-buried in the chaos of them, all my strange, mismatched, ridiculous pack.
I should have felt exhausted. And yet my chest ached with something warmer. It was Alaric's hand, sliding over mine, that finally pulled me back. "They'll be the death of us," he said dryly.
