NEVA POV
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Edric Castell stopped three feet from me.
He was taller than Reine, though the bearing was the same — that immaculate, load-bearing stillness, the stillness she'd clearly inherited and had been trying, since arriving at the compound, to repurpose for something other than the performance of authority.
He looked at me the way people looked at me when they'd already decided what I was and were surprised to find something else in the room.
"You know who I am," he said.
"I know enough," I said.
"You know what I've done to get here."
"Yes."
He looked past me at Ryke, briefly, and I saw in that look the specific quality of a man assessing a rival he'd underestimated, accepting the assessment, and not knowing what to do with the result.
Then he looked back at me.
"Where is
