Cassiopeia crossed the living room toward him, heels making quiet, precise taps against the marble, her eyes already fixed on Phei — on his reflection in the window, on the line of his shoulders, on the shape of him in the lamplight.
And then, three steps from the couch, her gaze drifted sideways.
Stopped.
Narrowed.
She had seen the book before.
Several times, in fact. On the edge of his bed at the Maxton mansion. Folded under his arm as he walked through corridors that wished him dead. In the one photograph Emily Hartwell had taken of him at a Paradise café just recently, always close to his bed at the penthouse —
It had occupied a dozens of quiet corners of his life since the moment she had known him and it had always made her wonder how he possessed something like this book.
She had, professionally, done her research on it.
Nothing her research had turned up had ever felt ordinary.
"Master."
"Mm?"
"How are you in possession of Rhythms of the Longing Distant Hearts?"
