Cosima walked in.

She wore a sharp, tailored ivory suit — not the dark, heavy fabric she had been taught to hide inside for a decade, but something clean and pale and unmistakable, chosen to be seen.

She did not shrink into the room.

She commanded it.

Beside her walked Caspian, silent, carrying a heavy steel dispatch box in both hands.

Every head at the table turned, and Cosima felt the old reflex rise in her — the decade-deep instinct to lower her eyes, to make herself smaller, to apologize with her whole body for the offense of being looked at.