Chapter 44: How to NOT negotiate with the devil (2)
Straight-backed in his chair. Pen in hand. Steel-gray eyes and a deep teal shirt with cuffs so crisp they could cut glass. Hair combed like the wind had been outlawed. And the expression of someone who’d just written the epitaph of someone important.
He wore a long blue coat with silver trim, pale gloves resting beside a stack of sealed papers. His hair was combed with painful precision. His face—too symmetrical not to be hiding some asymmetry of character.
The room had no windows. Just tall candles and heavy drapes, like light and sound were smuggled in through legally questionable amounts.
The air was dry, scented with something woodsy enough to offend. I stood near the door, technically inside the conversation—but also outside it. Pretending not to listen. Listening to everything.
Soren rose with the kind of slowness reserved for men who never do anything by impulse. The teal-blue coat looked freshly pressed, the collar too stiff to be comfortable—but flawless, like a nobleman’s smirk. When he spoke, it was with the voice of a man who practiced every syllable in front of a mirror.
"Miss Thalia," he said with a slow bow. Almost bored. "And... your companion."
He gave me a short, sharp look. The kind that weighs a bodyguard by how many visible scars he’s got. I kept my face blank. Eyes steady. Shoulders square. Trained to look more muscle than mind—and less observant than I really am.
"My bodyguard," Thalia replied, with a scalpel-precise smile. "We ran into some... complications on the road."
Her voice was steady, but it carried that subtle layer of curated charm—the kind you don’t get born with, you grow into. And the kind that sometimes grates.
"I’ve always heard the inland roads were poetic," he said, idly spinning the silver ring on his finger, "though I was never told if that included bandits, rain, or spooked horses."
She let out a polite laugh. Just the right volume to sound genuine, with none of the weariness.