“Report,” I said, walking past her into the high foyer.

I dropped the cheap handbag onto a bench and took a glass of sparkling water from the tray a member of the house staff held out.

It was strange to be back inside my own life after a morning in Corvin’s.

Everything here was quiet and enormous and mine, and none of it had ever once asked me to be smaller than I was.

I set the cheap handbag on the bench and felt the last of Adaeze-the-assistant peel away from me like a costume, and I did not miss her.

I had built her to answer a question, and the question was answered, and I could go back now to being the woman who had built her — the one who did not defer, did not economize, did not arrange her face into gratitude for scraps.