Malachai's POV — The Seraphim Court
The Court looked best at night.
Malachai had always believed this...had believed it for the better part of four centuries, standing at this same window, watching the city below arrange itself into something that almost resembled order. In daylight the cracks showed. The factions jostling against each other, the constant low-grade friction of competing interests, the visible evidence that the Court was not the unified instrument of power it was supposed to be.
At night it looked like what it was meant to be. Something ancient and inevitable. Something that had outlasted everything foolish enough to challenge it.
He preferred that version.
He was standing at the window now....hands clasped behind his back, posture easy, the perfect portrait of a man with nothing troubling his thoughts, when Vael entered the room.
