"Welcome, Elias! We've been waiting for you!"
The morning light in the North has a way of being brutally honest. It doesn't shimmer so much as it pierces, cutting through the frost-etched windows of the estate's grand solar to illuminate every speck of dust and every frayed nerve.
Elias looked like a man who had spent the last twenty-four hours vibrating on a diet of pure anxiety and perhaps a very poor choice in caffeinated tea. He arrived at the estate looking like a startled bird, clutching his leather-bound portfolio and several heavy garment bags as if they were lifeboats in a stormy sea. His eyes were shadowed with the deep purple of a sleepless night, yet there was a manic sort of glow in them.
Verona met him at the door herself, a breach of protocol that probably gave the head butler a mild facial twitch, but she couldn't care less.
