He descended the staircase. Crossed the entrance hall. Paused outside the receiving room door and took a breath — unnecessary, technically, but the human habit of it grounded him, the way it always did, a relic of the man he had been before the teeth and the hunger and the centuries of performing a version of himself that had never quite fit.
He opened the door.
Valestra was magnificent.
He could acknowledge that without pleasure. The way one acknowledges that a storm is magnificent, or a wildfire, or the precise moment before an earthquake levels a city. She was standing by the mantel in a gown of deep crimson — the colour she always wore, the colour of arterial blood, the colour that announced to every person in every room that Lady Valestra of House Ashborne was here and intended to be noticed.
