The room had no windows.
Whatever light existed came from sources Lady in Dark had never identified in all her visits here.
All she ever saw was a faint, directionless illumination that revealed shapes without revealing details, leaving everything at the edge of recognizable.
The walls were made of dark stone, with a floor of the same stone. The throne at the center was carved from something darker still, its surface absorbing what little light reached it rather than reflecting any back.
Lord Vine sat on it the way mountains sit on the earth. Not placed there. Simply present, as if the room had formed around him rather than the other way around.
His entire being radiated anger. The kind that had been compressed over time into something dense and cold, and it pressed outwards from him in a way that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with what he was.
Lady in Dark walked in and stopped at a comfortable distance.
"You left the boy alive," Lord Vine said.
