Lady in Dark let the silence stretch, watching the horror settle across Cecilia's face with quiet satisfaction.
It was a particular kind of horror, she had learned over the years. Not the kind that came from physical danger, which was blunt and immediate and faded quickly. This was the deeper kind. The kind that came from understanding. From seeing the shape of something clearly and recognizing that the shape was worse than anything you had imagined.
She let Cecilia sit in it.
The truth was that she could not simply take the dagger. She had known this for years, had built her entire approach around it, and had spent considerable time being patient about it.
The dagger was not an ordinary artifact. It could not be pried from a dead hand or cut free from a spatial ring. It had its own rules, old ones, written into its nature at the moment of its creation.
