The framework finished recalibrating overnight and Soren woke to find out what it had decided.
It hadn't lowered anything. It had done the opposite.
Every ceiling on the map had moved up to a hundred, none of them at the same mark.
Yara rode highest, Selah and Maren a step below her.
Dani's old sixty had become a hundred too, and she sat low on it, climbing.
He'd expected the higher ceiling to ease the pressure. It did the reverse.
A bigger cap was more room for the wanting to grow into, and the wanting had spent the night growing into it.
The part of the system that kept it quiet ran out of grip somewhere before morning.
The numbers held. The lid didn't.
◆◆◆◆
Maren had ears and a tail when he came down the stairs.
She sat at the table eating with both out like she'd never bothered to hide them, and she caught him looking.
"They're staying," she said, around a mouthful. "It costs me more to hide them than it costs to leave them."
