(AVA)
She is smaller than I expected.
That is the first thing I notice when Rhys brings her through. Not frail, not diminished, but the kind of small that belongs to something old and dense rather than something delicate. She walks into the room without hurry, takes in the layout, the table, Damien standing near his desk, and then she looks at me.
The way she looks at me is not the way people look at people.
It is the way you look at something rare that you have spent a very long time reading about and are now finally seeing in person. There is no performance in it. She simply looks at me the way a scientist looks at a specimen they have spent a career trying to find.
“Ms. Sinclair,” she says.
“Ms. Vael,” I say.
She sits without being invited to. Damien sits across from her. I sit b
