Chapter 179

*Rowan*

Grief didn’t come with fire. It didn’t scream. It didn’t rage.

It came in the quiet.

In the soft brush of wind over scorched earth, in the way ash clung to fingertips long after you’d wiped your hands clean. It came when everyone else had turned their backs, when the last shovel had packed the last mound of dirt, and still—your chest ached like something inside you hadn’t caught up yet.

Va