Raphael's POV — Elena's Apartment Building
He found parking on the street outside her building and sat in the car for exactly eleven seconds.
Not because he needed to collect himself. He was collected. He was always collected....two hundred years of navigating Courts and politics and the specific minefield of existing as something ancient in a world that kept changing around him had made composure less a choice and more a condition, like breathing. Something that happened without requiring conscious effort.
He sat in the car for eleven seconds because he could see her window from here.
Fourth floor, east-facing, the curtains she'd described as aggressively yellow because the previous tenant left them and I've decided they're cheerful rather than ugly. They were in fact quite ugly. He had never said this because she seemed genuinely attached to them and some things were not worth the conversation.
The curtains were closed. The light behind them was on.
