Edgar stood alone in his office, one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around a matte-black porcelain cup.
Below, the city pulsed—subways, finance floors, power grids. He could look out at it all and feel nothing. That had always been his gift.
But his eyes weren't on the skyline.
They were on her.
Lyra D'Argent sat alone behind the glass wall opposite his office, her desk untouched, her posture unreadable. She was mid-conversation—someone on the phone, from the angle of her jaw. Likely her father.
He couldn't hear a word.
He didn't need to.
The way her shoulder tensed slightly, then relaxed—the way her gaze shifted from floor to glass to nowhere at all—told him everything.
She was defending herself.
Against whom, he didn't know. But it rang familiar.
That was the problem with souls like hers. They carried too much weight in silence.
Just like before.
His jaw tightened.
She had looked like that the night of the sentencing, too—silent, still, helpless in a way that wasn't weakness but containment. As if she could keep the world from crumbling around her by simply not reacting.
And he'd mistaken it then for coldness.
Cowardice.
He hadn't forgiven her for that. Not really. Not even after a lifetime.
But now—watching her in profile, speaking into the phone, unaware she was being watched—he felt something twist inside him.
Not softness.
Something worse.
Doubt.
A hairline fracture lanced through the porcelain in his hand with a sharp crack. A tiny sound, but loud in the silence.
He blinked down.
The rim of the cup had split—just slightly. A vein of damage, fine as thread.
He hadn't realized he was gripping it that hard.
Slowly, he placed it on the edge of the windowsill, the crack catching the light.
Across the glass, Lyra ended her call. Her hand lingered on the phone a moment longer than it needed to. Then she turned in her chair—and looked up.
Right at him.
Their eyes met through two panes of engineered bulletproof glass.
But the impact was immediate.
Like standing too close to a fire you weren't sure wanted to burn you—or hold you still.
She didn't look away.
Neither did he.
Then, slowly, she reached for a pen and opened her notebook.
The connection broke.
The silence rushed back in.
And Edgar Thornevale, the man who remembered everything, felt himself exhale like he'd just surfaced from somewhere deep and dark and full of heat.
He turned from the window.
And for the first time in a very long time, he didn't know what he was going to do next.