The villa kitchen filled up faster than usual that evening, everyone arriving within minutes of each other as though the news had traveled ahead of any of them actually saying it out loud.
Isole set the certifier's summary card on the table, face up, and didn't offer any commentary on it herself. She'd already said everything she planned to say about it back in the assessment room. Let the words do their own work now.
Containment reading, active draw: acceptable, pending full-panel verification.
The room held its breath around the four words in a way that had nothing to do with volume — no one had raised their voice, no one had even really spoken yet, but the specific quality of the quiet had already changed since Isole set the card down.
Ashe read it twice, the second time slower than the first, and Vane watched her hand curl at her side into something just short of a fist, the same tell he'd learned to read at the gate three weeks earlier.
