ELARA POV
"Come in," Silver said.
It was not a question.
The room was smaller than I had imagined, and somehow, because of that, more significant. Rooms that you build in your mind over days of passing a closed door always come out larger than they are. The reality of this one — its actual dimensions, its single window, the few plain things arranged within it with the careful economy of someone who had learned long ago that most things are unnecessary — landed with the quiet weight of a secret proven true.8
There was a chair near the window.
Silver looked at it.
I sat.
She didn't sit. She moved instead to the far side of the small room and stood with her back partially to the window, so that the light came from behind her and I had to look at her face without the assistance of it. N
