Wren’s Pov
Damian hadn't told me about the phone call until the next morning, over coffee I didn't taste, and by the time he finished repeating Silas's words back to me — I do hope you'll let me be the first to meet my niece properly, before Friday — my hands had gone so still they might as well have belonged to someone else entirely.
"He's not getting anywhere near me before Friday," I said. "Tell me that's not actually on the table."
"It isn't. I told him we'd be delighted to arrange something after the engagement is public, which buys us time without an outright refusal that would tell him we're afraid of the meeting." Damian's voice was steady in the particular way that meant he'd already spent half the night calculating every version of that conversation and had chosen his response
