The Grey seam closed behind me, and the cold, tense air of the Kagu estate folded down to nothing. In its place came the quiet of my Avalon penthouse. Sunlight, warmer here than in the mountain valley, lay across the floor in long bars. The place smelled faintly of solder and ozone, and under that, of Reika's coffee from that morning. Home.
The weight on my shoulders didn't go anywhere, but it shifted. The decisions made in the Kagu courtyard, the women holding the line against her cult while I went to her alone, felt a little further off with the house wards humming around me. I had a few hours. I knew exactly how I wanted to spend them.
There was something else I'd brought home with me, though, and it hadn't left me for a week.
