The gala had been over for three hours.
Vane was sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark.
He wasn't sleeping. He wasn't running mental combat forms. The spear rested against the wall exactly where he had leaned it when he walked in, entirely untouched. The Usurper was dead quiet in his mind. He was just sitting there with the lights off, listening to Varum run its late-night atmospheric cycle outside the glass, feeling everything from the last twenty-four hours sitting like compacted lead in his chest with nowhere to go.
Then, he heard them in the corridor.
Three distinct sets of footsteps. He identified all three before the knock even came.
"Come in," he said, his voice grating slightly in the quiet.
Valerica opened the door. Isole was right behind her. Nyx trailed behind Isole. They filed in without a shred of hesitation or ceremony—the specific way people entered a room when a collective decision had already been made in the hallway, rendering the knock a mere formality.
