Ava’s POV
Nathaniel’s message was short and steady: Come to the consultancy office, meeting room.
The way he wrote it made me feel both wanted and warned. I left my studio in a rush, my hands still smelling of glue and cedar, I drove to the office where he had arranged to meet Silas. The sky was a clean hard blue, but inside the city felt uneasy, like the calm before something moves.
The building where we met wasn’t one I’d been in often. It belonged to a consultancy Nathaniel used sometimes: glass, low lights, the scent of coffee and leather. The meeting room had one long table and a wall of screens. Amelia sat at the far end, her face sharp with the kind of attention that means she’d been awake for hours. Silas was there too, my least favorite of Nathaniel’s contacts: deliberate, qui
