The first filament slid through the fake sky like silk through a ring. It stopped a hand's width above the roof, pausing as if deciding whether we were worth its time. The air, which had just begun to taste of clean metal and rain, was suddenly thick with perfume and knives.
"Hold centre," Lucifer said again, and this time the ease had gone out of his voice. His twin crowns, one pure white, one absolute black, began to glow just enough to make the ceiling behave. He traced two small, sharp sunbrands along the main brass seam of the roof. The structure remembered that its job was to stay up.
"I am," I said, planting my feet.
The Accord sat quietly in my wrists and ankles. My Lucent Harmony, vast and steady now, lived in the room: in the walls, the floor, even around the cooling body of the Archduke inside Erebus's cold ring. The Grey flattened two plain squares under my boots so the floor would stop trying to have an opinion.
