Seraphina studied me for a long time, her crystalline blue eyes moving over my face with the slow, methodical precision of a machine designed to detect flaws in diamond. The silence stretched between us like a taut wire. Below us, the city glittered and sprawled—a vast, luminous tapestry of steel and light, millions of souls moving through their evening routines without even the slightest awareness that the foundation of their entire world was being negotiated, dissected, and potentially redefined in a room made of nothing but glass and artificial, sterile light.
"You want to know about your father," she said.
It wasn't a question.
