Corvane looked at the golden lines on his floor the way a landlord looks at graffiti. Then he spoke a new law, his voice flat and architectural.
"All paths will narrow."
Lucifer's sunbrands flickered. The wide, safe lanes they had outlined shrank to the width of a tightrope. The veils on either side pressed in, their hungry edges a hair's breadth from the gold. One misstep, one loss of balance, and I would fall sideways into a wall of rot.
'Excellent,' Valeria said, dripping sarcasm. 'Now we're fighting on a knife's edge. Literally. Try not to fall off the metaphor.'
