[KAEL — POV]
Thessaly's private residence was a townhouse in the inner quarter that had been old when Kael was young. She had lived in it for four hundred years and maintained it with the particular stubborn attachment of a person who had watched everything else change and decided this one thing would not.
He knocked. Three times, then twice, then once—the pattern she'd given him a century ago for situations requiring her immediate attention.
The door opened.
Thessaly was small and white-haired and looked approximately seventy years old, which was roughly three hundred and fifty years short of her actual age. She had eyes that had been watching the world for five centuries and reflected the accumulation of that in a way that was impossible to look at directly for very long.
"You're in
