Eve's POV
The throne room was at the heart of the Court.
Not the center of the building. The heart of it. The place everything else had been built around, corridors and chambers and formal halls all arranged with this room as the point they radiated from.
Raphael led them through corridors Eve recognized and corridors she didn't. Deeper into the building than she'd been before. The stone getting older the further they went. The light changing, less of the artificial Court lighting, more of something else. Something that came from the walls themselves.
She felt it before she saw it.
The pull in her chest shifted.
Not stronger exactly. Just....different. Like a compass needle that had been spinning for weeks suddenly finding north and going completely still.
Raphael stopped in front of a set of doors.
Old. Dark wood. Iron handles worn smooth from centuries of hands.
He looked at Eve.
"Ready," he said.
She nodded.
He pushed them open.
She had expected something grand.
