I found Dorian in the ballroom, he was standing in the centre of it, alone with his jacket on, coffee in hand, and looking at the space with the focused attention of a man cataloguing exits, and when he heard me he didn't turn around.
"Marco told you about the room," he said.
"Marco told me about the room," I confirmed.
"Good." He turned then, and looked at me across the empty ballroom, there were white flowers everywhere, the harbour visible through tall windows, three hundred chairs arranged in precise rows, and something in his face was different and sharper this morning, sharper, the softness of the library conversations and the terrace gone, replaced by the version of him I'd seen the least and felt the most, the version that had built an empire from nothing and burned another man'
