Sera's Pov
Nobody spoke for a moment after the operative was taken out.
The word he had left in the room sat in the air between us the way certain words did, heavy, taking up more space than its syllables had any right to. Leverage. A clinical word for a thing that was not clinical at all. A word for using a person's love as a weapon against them.
I stood very still.
I was aware of Riven watching me from his side of the room, not intrusively, the quiet focused attention he gave me when something large had just landed and he was waiting to see how I processed it. Gideon had his arms crossed and his eyes down, the posture of a man sitting with something uncomfortable. Dex was the only one looking anywhere other than me or the floor. He was looking at the wall, his jaw tight.
They had co
