The penthouse had settled into a maddening silence by the time Phei made it back — just him and the light.
Day had gone soft and golden at its edges and was sliding, unhurried, into afternoon, and it poured through what was very possibly the most ruinously expensive expanse of glass on the planet, gilding everything it touched.
The vaulted ceiling drank the glow and gave it back gentler:
For one suspended moment the place stopped resembling real estate and started resembling what it had always quietly aspired to be: a resting place for some divine thing pausing between miracles, catching its breath before the next inconvenient act of creation.
'Well. Not entirely far-fetched, is it?'
He smiled at the arrogance of the thought — at how thoroughly he'd earned the arrogance, and how little comfort the earning had turned out to be —
Phei crossed to the wardrobe to change into something the day's nonsense would deign to call formal.
