She reached over and took my hand. Her fingers were cool the way they always were, not Natalia's supernatural frost but the natural chill of someone whose Aspect leaked cold the way sunlight leaked warmth. She squeezed once and let go.
"Noah will walk you out."
"She'll enjoy that."
"She will."
Noah did, in fact, enjoy escorting me to the library door with the energy of a woman removing a pest from a formal garden. I caught Noah glancing back at Cel as we left. The blonde bodyguard's expression softened for half a heartbeat before the professional mask snapped back into place.
"Monday," Noah said at the threshold. Not a question.
"Monday."
The door closed behind me.
I stood in the hallway and breathed.
Two days. Thirty seven hours. Then a dinner table with my mother, the president of Valoria, and the ghost of a man who had turned his son into infrastructure and filed the receipts.
