Elena POV
The rooftop garden had been Kelly's idea—a small, unused space above Kael headquarters that she'd had converted in the weeks since the crisis, half practical stress relief, half stubborn insistence that the building deserve something growing on it after everything it had survived.
"You actually built this," I said, surveying the raised beds, the small fruit trees still young enough to need staking, the herbs already filling the air with something green and alive.
"I needed a project that wasn't a company or a war," Kelly said. "It turns out gardening's oddly similar to crisis management. Just slower, and nobody dies if you get it wrong."
"High praise."
"The highest I've got these days."
We'd gathered the whole group for what Adrian had insisted on calling, without irony, a normal evening—no agenda, no debrief, just food and conversation on a rooftop that smelled like rosemary and cut grass.
