The frost that morning had crept high enough to lace the windows of the Nest in white veins. The fire had burned out by dawn, and though the city below was just beginning to stir, the silence inside the townhouse felt almost sacred — like the moment before a storm breaks.
Serena had been awake for hours.
Sleep had long abandoned her, replaced instead by that sharp, watchful stillness that comes when one has learned to fear the sound of knocking.
It came all the same — soft, deliberate — three times.
When she opened the door, the messenger handed her a sealed envelope and bowed before vanishing into the mist.
She didn't need to read the wax to know who it was from.
The Cross crest was unmistakable — elegant, unhurried, the symbol of a man who had once signed verdicts with the same hand that undid lives.
