**Mira's POV**
After Freya went to bed, Mira found Garrett in the study.
He was reading with his glasses perched on his nose, a glass of bourbon sweating on the desk beside him. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway. "Long day."
"Very." She dropped into the chair across from him and pulled her legs up underneath herself — an old habit, something she used to do as a teenager when she had something difficult to say. Garrett noticed. Set down his book.
"What is it?"
Mira told him everything. About Sera Sinclair. About the referral to Valeblack. About the quiet, cold certainty she'd felt making the call. Garrett listened without interrupting — another old habit, this one the reason Mira had always come to him first with her truths.
When she finished, he was quiet fo
