The Council Hall smelled like cold stone and old paper.
It shouldn't have. It was twelve blocks away across wards and river from Wolfe Tower, and it was midnight, not noon, and the elevator that opened onto it had dropped sideways, not down. But smell hit Elara first, before sight, because smell was how her mother had taught her to find safe places — sage and rain and cedar smoke meant safe. Council Hall had none of that. It smelled like a place where things were filed and forgotten and left to yellow.
White chairs, hundreds of them, in perfect rows, all empty. White marble floor that showed every scuff, every old bloodstain scrubbed thin. At the front, a dais. Two chairs. Not one. Both white, but the second chair was older, wood showing through chipped paint where many hands had gripped
