They took him out under guard before the sun had fully risen, and I watched him go without any of the fear I'd carried into that garage doorway three months earlier, the day he'd first told me my mother's name like a threat wrapped in a compliment. Whatever he still was, in whatever fraction of authority the council let him keep pending review, he wasn't the thing standing over my future anymore. He was simply a man who'd finally run out of room to hide inside his own careful calculations.
Callan found me in the hallway afterward, some of his usual composure returning now that the immediate danger had passed. "That was not the fight I expected you to win this cleanly," he said. "Rosalind's going to want to hear every detail. I suspect she'll be insufferably proud."
"She earned the right
