Chapter 27: Malachar, in a Conference Room

The intermediary's name was Councillor Yael Dross, and she had been practicing neutral facilitation for thirty-one years, and she wore the expression of someone who had long since stopped being surprised by the things powerful people asked her to arrange.

The room was a conference suite on the third floor of the Aldric Street Conciliation Office — a building that existed specifically to host conversations that officially were not happening. Evander had been in it once before, at sixteen, when the Ministry had tried to broker a voluntary training agreement and Voss had sat beside him with her hands folded and her expression arranged into something that was not quite a threat. The carpet was the same shade of institutional grey. Someone had replaced the water carafe.

He arrived seven minutes early, which was not a habit but a choice, and stood at the window looking down at the street below where Seren was positioned in a coffee shop with a sight line to the building's entrance and a comm stone in her coat pocket. He had told her she didn't need to come. She had told him she was coming. They had not discussed it further.