He didn’t step back.
She noticed he didn’t step back. Her eyes widened a fraction—a tell she probably didn’t know she had.
She argued with her whole body—hands sketching shapes in the air, leaning forward on the balls of her feet, her expressions shifting faster than most people spoke. He stayed still. Countered with precision. Two opposite approaches to the same fire, and neither gave an inch. When she referenced an obscure Golden Age villain—a deep cut that required years of obsessive reading—the control he maintained broke for one involuntary second. No one had made him want to smile in a creative space in years.
Kael had been watching through the glass partition the entire time.
You liked it. She tore into your work and you liked it. That’s not a professional response. That’s a problem.
Twenty minutes after she left,he stood at the drafting table, her Nightbloom pages still spread where they’d arguedover them, turning over every point she’d made. The depth of her knowledge sat in his chest like a held breath he wasn’t ready to release.
The door opened. Kael. Two fresh coffees. The expression of a man who had been waiting in the corridor for exactly this moment.
“Offer her the contract,” Zeir said.
Kael’s eyebrows rose. He set both coffees down. Slowly. “I thought you said her pacing was undisciplined.”
“It is.”
“And her color choices were ‘aggressively emotional.’”
“They are.”
“And you want to work with her.”
“Yes.”
Kael studied him. The grin was gone.
“Big brother.” He picked up one of the coffees. “I say this with love: you are so screwed.”
“It’s a business decision.”
“You’re standing in a room that smells like her and you haven’t moved in twenty minutes. That’s not a business decision. That’s a situation.”
“Draft the contract.”
“Already started.” Kael headed for the door, coffee in hand. “This artist argued with you about the fundamental nature of your creative philosophy for sixty minutes and you didn’t end anything. You conceded points. I saw your face through the glass.” Kael paused at the door. “You liked it.”
The door closed behind him.
Zeir stood in the studio. The Nightbloom pages. He stared at them for another ten minutes before he closed them.
Kael was also right about the situation.
He was so screwed.
TEN
LUMI
Keanu’s office smelled like expensive leather and righteous fury.
Lumi perched on the corner of her brother’s desk, boots swinging six inches above the carpet, watching him dismantle a forty-page contract like it had called his mother a liar. His tie was loosened. His sleeves were rolled. His pen moved through clauses the way a general moved through enemy territory—systematic, merciless, and deeply personal.
The Midtown skyline burned orange through floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. Sixth Avenue, forty-second floor. The kind of office that announced its occupant had won arguments for a living and decorated accordingly. Clean lines. Glass and steel. A framed Nightbloom print on the wall beside his diplomas—Sable mid-battle, the inks fierce and uncompromising. He’d hung it the week after she published Volume 1. He’d never told her that. Mika had.
“This clause gives him veto power over your character designs.” Keanu circled the offending paragraph in red. His pen strokes were merciless.
