Elena's POV
"Come to my office. Now."
The words stayed with me the entire elevator ride down, and by the time I stepped off onto Damian's floor, my nerve to confess had curdled into something closer to dread. I found him at his desk, buried in paperwork, barely looking up as I entered.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Sign these when you have a minute," he said, distracted, gesturing toward a stack of vendor releases without looking up. "Gala related. Nothing urgent, I just wanted them off my desk before the council session tomorrow."
The anticlimax of it left me strangely unmoored, all the courage I'd spent the afternoon gathering suddenly with nowhere to go. I signed where he indicated, made brief, careful small talk, and left twenty minutes later no closer to the conversation I'd promised
