CASSIAN
The lobby was still vibrating with the aftershock of my voice. It was a frequency the people in this room weren't used to, not the volume, which remained measured, but the absolute lack of negotiation in the marrow of it.
I didn't rush. I walked toward the center of the disturbance with a slow, rhythmic gait that claimed every inch of marble I stepped on. The security detail had frozen like statues in a park, their hands hovering in a pathetic, mid-air stasis.
I reached Noah. Up close, the details were worse. He was facing me now, his jaw set so tight I could see the strain in his neck.
His eyes were bright, not with the moisture of a victim, but with the searing, white-hot fury of someone who had been pushed to the edge of his dignity and chosen to stand there rather than fall.
He was upright. He was refusing to fold, even with the weight of his entire failed history staring him down from five feet away.
