A week later, the sun had the audacity to shine in winter.
Light poured through the glass dome of the Fitzgeralt Assembly Hall, scattering across chandeliers and polished marble floors like liquid gold. The room smelled faintly of citrus polish and wealth, centuries of it, layered over expensive perfume and conversation too practiced to be sincere.
Lucas stood at Trevor's side, perfect posture wrapped in cream silk and quiet indifference. He looked exactly as a Fitzgeralt consort should: poised, immaculate, and only faintly bored. Trevor, beside him, was the picture of composed authority, his black suit sharp enough to cut through the noise, his violet tie a deliberate echo of the Fitzgeralt crest and his eyes.
If the nobles in attendance represented the Empire's elite, Cressida Fitzgeralt was its ruling ghost, a matriarch no one dared to cross and whom everyone pretended to admire.
And she was, as Lucas privately noted, in one of her moods.
