The portal unfurled onto herringbone parquet waxed to a conspiratorial gleam with a soft lustre.
Phei stepped through first while Cassiopeia followed a precise half-step behind, her presence a silent.
The void sealed itself behind them with the polite hush of air remembering its own shape, leaving the pair standing dead-centre in what the federal paperwork still insisted—on paper—was a prison cell.
But the actual reality suggested otherwise!
The room was an obscenity of comfort.
Twenty-foot ceilings caught recessed lighting in warm amber pools that made everything look expensive and slightly guilty.
Two cream-leather couches cradled a low glass table bearing a crystal decanter of Macallan and two tumblers still faintly misted from recent use. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed a private garden ringed by wrought iron so elegant it might have been commissioned for a country club rather than any detention facility.
