Chapter 14 · free to read
No security at the gate. No secretary at the door. He had cleared the house, which I understood later was not courtesy but stagecraft.
It hummed the whole time we talked. Neither of us mentioned it, and both of us counted it.
He did not blink and he did not perform. He answered like a man reading his own balance sheet aloud.
Every part of me wanted to stand up. I had worked out, somewhere around the third day of Mi-sol's lessons, that standing up is the same as leaving, and leaving is the same as forfeiting.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.