He stayed for two hours.
Not for questioning— they had moved past that, somewhere in the first five minutes, in a way that felt less like a choice and more like an inevitability, the way rivers stopped flowing in one direction when the landscape changed beneath them.
They talked.
Not about the Moon Council, not about the execution order, not about the guards on the floor or the envoy he’d detained in the east wing. They talked the way people talk when they are circling something true and not yet ready to name it — sideways, careful, with short pauses that carried more than the words.
She asked him about Blackstone. Not its political structure, not its defenses — its architecture. The choices made in stone and height and layout. He found himself explaining the construction of the easter
