Valemont City – Café La Rue, 2:17 P.M.
Selene hated surveillance meetings. They made her feel watched even when she was the one watching.
She sat at a corner table beneath the terrace canopy, coffee untouched, a book open on her lap to mask the mic clipped discreetly inside her sleeve. The midday crowd moved around her laughter spilling from polished tables, the clink of spoons against porcelain, the faint hiss of the espresso machine inside. Normal life. Ordinary noise. And yet Selene’s pulse thrummed against her throat as if she were balancing on the edge of a blade.
Across the street, a man in a tailored ash-grey suit smoked a cigarette he never lit.
Magnus Dorne.
He looked older than she remembered, but not weaker. If anything, he had sharpened with time leaner, slicker, and infin
