(Finn's POV)
The palace had turned into a living canvas these last few days, every shadow a brushstroke of doubt, every torch a stroke of gold that could be either truth or forgery. I'd stopped sleeping in my own bed. Too many empty walls staring back at me, too many half-finished portraits of Nalia that suddenly looked wrong when the candle guttered low. Instead I crashed wherever the circle gathered—sometimes in the old solar tower with blankets piled on the floor, sometimes in the library curled between Ethan's books, sometimes in the armory with the scent of oil and steel and the others' bodies all tangled together like we could ward off the Wraith by sheer stubborn closeness.
