I had spent my whole life inside an empire that ran on things that could not bear the light, and I had not understood, until I built something that could, how exhausting the darkness had been — how much of my energy, every single day, had gone to guarding a secret I hadn’t even known the full shape of.

That energy came back to me all at once when I no longer had anything to hide, and I poured it into the work, and the work was good.

Chapter 26 — In the Clear

It is a year and a half later, and I take my own coffee in the morning now — a small thing, and the sweetest ritual of my day, because I make it myself and I know exactly what is in it.

Sennett is paying for what he did, on the record, in the way the law provides.

Perpetua is answering for the money.