“I am,” I answer without looking back, letting the words fall flat as I move ahead of them instead of with them.
The interior air shifts immediately, growing cooler as I cross the threshold, and the lighting softens into something deliberately calming, warm tones layered over rigid architecture that feels more like a performance than a design choice. Every surface is immaculate, too perfect, too untouched, and the faint echo of my footsteps follows me just enough to remind me how empty the space actually is.
“Straight ahead,” the first guard says, gesturing toward a set of doors already opening before we reach them, his voice quieter now, like he knows who’s waiting on the other side.
I don’t respond, because I don’t need to, and because whatever comes next isn’t for them.
The doors part cleanly, and the room beyond expands outward, large enough to create distance, structured enough to control it, and positioned at the center of it all?—
Him.
Baronet Kleid Lorens stands with his hands loosely clasped behind his back, posture straight, expression composed, and there’s something about the way he holds himself that tells me he believes this is already over.
“Stacy,” Lorens says, his voice smooth and measured, though the faint lift at the edge of it betrays his satisfaction. As he steps forward, his gaze moves over me in a slow, assessing pass. “You’ve made this… remarkably easy.”
I stop several feet from him, placing myself deliberately in the center of the space without closing the distance fully, and I meet his gaze without hesitation.
“Have I,” I ask, my voice calm, almost curious, as if I’m inviting him to explain something I already understand.
Lorens smiles faintly, the expression composed but tightening just slightly at the corners as he begins to circle, his steps slow and deliberate.
“Yes,” he replies, his tone confident as he moves behind my peripheral line of sight. “Voluntary return simplifies everything.”
I turn my head just enough to track him without mirroring his movement completely, refusing to give him control of the pacing.
“Is that what you think this is?” I ask, my voice steady as I let the question settle into the space between us.
Lorens pauses mid-step, just for a fraction of a moment, before continuing his movement, though the rhythm of it shifts.
“I think,” he says, his voice lowering slightly as he comes back into view, “that you’ve recognized the inevitable outcome and chosen the least painful path to it.”
I let a small breath out through my nose, not quite a laugh, but close enough to carry the implication.
“That’s one interpretation,” I say.
Lorens slows, his gaze narrowing slightly.
“And yours?” he presses, stopping just off-center, forcing a direct exchange.
I hold his gaze, letting the silence stretch just long enough to become deliberate rather than passive.
“I think you’re overestimating your position,” I say finally, my tone quiet but precise.
The shift is immediate.
Lorens pauses, his composure tightening as something sharper flickers beneath it.
“Careful,” he says, his voice lower now, the smoothness thinning into something edged. “You’re not in a position to negotiate.”
I tilt my head slightly, studying him.
“I’m not negotiating,” I reply. “I’m clarifying.”
“Clarifying what?” he asks, the irritation surfacing more clearly now.
“That you’re not the one in control here,” I say, letting the words land without emphasis.
The silence that follows isn’t empty, and I can see the recalibration happen in real time, the moment where confidence begins to fracture into analysis.
