Chapter 51. The Parcel in Brown Paper

Veilgrove’s bread blessing did not look like a ritual. It looked like a market that refused to sell anything. Jun set long tables in the square and turned every loaf into a parabola of possibility. The saints stood stone-still and let the steam curl around their cheeks. Children climbed the lower steps and tried very hard not to break rules. Someone tuned a fiddle and then remembered today was not a fiddle day and played a low drone that sounded like a river holding its breath.

Mara did not raise her hands. She does not need to. She stood at the center with a salt bowl and said only, “Thank you.”

It was not addressed to us.

Jun ladled her thanks into bowls the size of her forearms and handed them to anyone who came forward without a weapon in their hand and without a hunger they meant to turn into policy. Which, in Veilgrove, is most people and almost all the rest.

Kael drifted to my side. It felt like weather taking my place at a window. He took a piece of b