I have had a lot of bad mornings.
I have woken up in a body that was not mine with a god's voice in my skull telling me I had two months to seduce my stepsister or my testicles would experience a religious event. I have watched a tree older than human language cry through a puppet shaped like a child. I have been struck by enough lightning to run a hospital.
Somehow the worst one is this. Standing in a basement full of preserved people while the most powerful woman in Valoria asks me if I want to hear a story, and me wanting to say yes.
"Everybody hold," I said.
Raphael did not hold. He half turned, gold crackling up his forearms, and Natalia's voice hit him like a thrown brick.
"Santoro. Stand down."
"She's got a Sanctions team stacked in that stairwell."
