The study lamp was still on.
Vincent saw it from the corridor. The thin line of gold under the door, the quality of light that meant someone had been sitting in one place for long enough to stop noticing it was on. He'd seen that light at 2 am. after Enzo. After Matteo's first near-miss. After the night a Blade had almost not come back.
He opened the door.
Raven was at the desk. She wasn't writing. The pen was in her hand but the page in front of her was blank, and she was looking at the far wall the way people looked at walls when the wall was the only thing in the room that wasn't asking anything of them.
She heard him come in. Didn't turn.
He crossed the room and sat in the chair across from her. Not the armchair. The straight-backed one she'd pulled to the other side of the desk. He sat the way he always sat: without taking up extra space, without announcing himself. Just settled, and waited.
A minute passed.
"Val told you," Raven said.
