He didn't sleep after the second Fracture notification.
Maren and Selah were still out cold on either side of him, while the DING burned in the corner of his vision.
340 kilometers northeast. The city is called Verath.
Joan had said there were seven sites total.
Now one of them had woken up.
Soren extracted himself from the bed at 05:30 without waking anyone.
This required unhooking Maren's tail from his waist one loop at a time, sliding out from under Selah's frost-field before she registered the temperature change, and stepping over Dani's legs where they'd slid off the chair sometime around 4 AM.
Yara let him go.
He felt the shadow pull back as he stood, the way it always did when she decided to give him space without being asked.
◆◆◆◆
The morning air in the corridor was cold enough that his breath fogged.
His arms were stiff under the bandages but the overnight treatment had worked better than he expected.
