Dessa Durke was wearing diamonds, a silk robe the color of claret, and a poker face, and she had already dealt the cards.
She sat at the far end of the Summit's dining table, under a chandelier Avery had always hated, with two hands of cards face down on the glass in front of her and a third in her own ringed fingers. It was well past any reasonable hour. The city burned beyond the windows in every direction, eighty-eight floors down and spreading to the black edge of the bay. His grandmother did not look at any of it.
She looked at Alina.
"Sit, pet," she said. "You play?"
Avery watched Alina take in the room. He saw it, for one second, the way she must have seen it: glass walls on three sides, the sky pressing in like water against an aquarium, the rooftop pool glowing turquoise throu
