The screaming outside hadn't stopped, but for a long, strange moment nobody in the chamber moved, like the entire room was holding its breath around the man standing in the doorway.
Corin didn't look like a monster.
That was the first thing Mika noticed as he stepped through the chamber doors, flanked by two of the shadow-touched creatures like they were nothing more than well-trained dogs. He looked like an ordinary man in his fifties, greying at the temples, dressed like he'd walked out of a quiet academic life rather than eleven years of planning something like this. Only his eyes gave him away — flat, patient, entirely too calm for a man standing in a room full of wolves who all wanted him dead.
"Corin." Yara's voice shook, grief and fury tangled together so tightly Mika couldn't te
