CHAPTER 1: The Empty Chair Beside Her

Elara Voss sat alone in the front row of the municipal hearing room, hands folded over a black leather folder, eyes lowered toward the worn tile floor.
The room was not grand enough for the damage planned inside it. Fluorescent lights hummed above rows of wooden chairs. A long desk stretched across the front where city officials whispered behind nameplates. Reporters lined the back wall with cameras held at chest height, waiting for something clean enough to sell as civic order.
Behind Elara, nearly every seat was full. Contractors. Donors. Council aides. Neighbors who had come because demolition notices had appeared on their doors without signatures anyone could trace.
No one sat beside her.
That was deliberate. Her former husband, Adrian Voss, had spent three months teaching the city that proximity to Elara was dangerous. She was unstable, he said. Bitter, he said. Desperate to embarrass him because the divorce had not given her enough.
Elara listened to the whispers behind her without turning around. She had learned that rooms full of cowards often sounded like paper being handled carefully.
At the front, Mayor Camden Rusk glanced at the clock, then at the uniformed officer standing near the aisle.
Elara noticed the glance.
She noticed everything.