Time/Date: TC1853.01.20 – Dawn
Location: Metropolitan Police Station, 4th Ring
The safe house smelled of soap and old wood—clean but impersonal, the kind of space designed for temporary occupation rather than living. Raven sat on the narrow bed, knees drawn up, watching dawn light creep through the gap in the curtains. Gray at first, then touched with gold as the sun breached the horizon somewhere beyond the Fourth Ring's dense architecture.
She hadn't slept much.
Her mind kept circling through what Officers Veyne and Holt had told her about the baby swap. About Selene and Edmund's confession. About Selene's hidden alchemy talent—systematically stolen and suppressed by her own twin sister for nearly fifty years. About Caelia Lin, the woman who was apparently her biological mother, who had stolen credit for decades of her twin sister's alchemical work.
And about Darian Long. Her biological father. A military commander, Dragon bloodline, husband to Caelia for nearly thirty years.
