Matteo said nothing after Selara's demand.
Get me a meeting with my master.
She had said it as though the request were simple, as though the man they were discussing had not spent more than a century becoming a ghost with a laboratory attached to his name. The problem was that, within the ugly limits of what Matteo knew, it might actually be possible. Selara had a past with her master, yes, but Matteo had one as well, a long and bitter thread tied through old arguments, broken research halls, and memories neither of them had ever managed to bury properly.
At last, Matteo drew a slow breath and pressed both hands around the head of his cane.
"Fine," he said. "It cannot be done today. The message will need to travel through old channels, and if he answers at all, it will most likely arrive tomorrow. The meeting would have to be in two days, before the main day of the event."
Selara accepted the timing with a small motion of her chin. "Understood. That works."
