28
For a moment that lasted centuries, the conference room remained perfectly silent.
Hundreds of faces pivoted to stare at Palace.
Right over her slumped fiancée.
Dale felt paralyzed. His legs, his arms, all belonged to someone else. Someone that didn’t want to move. A different person that wasn’t here, not in this room, not with a body. His lungs had stopped halfway through exhaling.
His pulse lub-dubbed loud and hard in his ears. Once, twice.
For an endless second, the room felt frozen in crystal.
Palace’s next scream shattered the world.
People jumped to their feet. Others shouted, screamed, shrieked. A short black-haired woman in a brilliant sari sitting a few rows from the front leapt to her feet and dashed towards Marsupial, her massive purse swinging like a mace. The shouti
