Lucas POV
The study was quiet in the way the house rarely was anymore.
No guards shifting weight outside the door. No conversation carrying from the kitchen down the corridor. Just Annalyn across the table from me, the Journal open between us, and the particular kind of silence that only settles when two people are the last ones carrying something that cannot be put down.
She was not reading. She was looking at the open page the way a person looks at something familiar they are still not entirely sure what to do with.
"We are the only two people left who have read all of it," she said finally. "Not sections. Not summaries. All of it."
"Yes."
"That is not a small thing."
"No," I agreed. "It isn't."
She turned a page without reading it. "It means if one of us loses something, it's simply gone. No backup. No second record. Just gone."
"Which is why we don't lose anything."
She looked up. "And if one of us dies?"
