The villa at Rohan should have been a refuge. Instead, beneath its glass walls and minimalist furniture, it felt like a cage. Afternoon light poured in hard and bright, cutting across polished stone floors and the glitter of a still, chlorinated pool. Every surface looked cold and lifeless, like a showroom stripped after the buyers had left.
Benedict stood at the edge of the terrace, fists braced on the railing, knuckles white. At thirty-three he still had the build of the rising star he'd once been in Palatine, but the set of his jaw and the feverish gleam in his eyes told another story. His phone lay face-down behind him on the table, the last message still glowing: Odin arrested, the entire ring purged. In Saha, priests cut down in a single night. Names he had groomed for years, gone in a line of text.
He laughed once, a harsh, cracked sound. "Ashes," he muttered. "They turned everything to ashes."
