Raleigh:
The walk to the kitchen was awkwardly quiet.
I led Greg through the palace, the silence egging on me. Lucien had stayed upstairs with Tania,but I wasn't worried about them. If anything, I was worried about Tania's impression on me.
I got the feeling that she didn't like me, which hurt, because I wanted to make sure everyone was comfortable with me. Sitting in that meeting, I badly wanted to get out of the stuffy room. It was like her venomous eyes were suffocating me, squeezing every ounce of secrets from my already thin body. She spoke to me with such malignity, such poison on her tongue, that it made me search back into my memory to see if I had met her previously. Somehow, any image of Tania failed to compute in my mind.
I knew Lucien recognized her. I felt his ne
