# Chapter 2: Fleur Visconti

The room smelled of jasmine and ozone, and every screen in the honeycomb wall was showing the same boy.

Fleur Visconti sat at the center of it all in a throne of white leather, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of something dark and cold in her hand. Behind her, the private lounge sprawled in velvet and chrome: a crescent of couches, a bar that cost more than most ships, and a wide window that looked out over Earth turning far below like a blue marble thrown into the dark.

She was watching the middle screen, the one that showed the storage room where the boy in the black dress was peeling off his disguise. And she was smiling the way she smiled before a hunt.

"You have to be kidding me," said Kestrel.

Kestrel Moreau. They called her Kestrel in the holos because she flew like she was trying to die young. Right now she had her boots up on an ottoman and a drink in each hand, and she was staring at the screen with the expression of someone watching a very good show for free.

"It's a boy," Sigrid Voss said. She was Fleur's deputy, tall and blonde, scarred down one cheek, built like a bulkhead with manners like a door that had been welded shut. She didn't sound surprised. She sounded impressed. "Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Athletic. Trained. Look at the way he moves. That's not a party guest. That's a soldier."

"Seventeen," Fleur murmured. "And he walked into the most secure gala in the inner system wearing a dress and seven-inch heels. He slapped Brick Callahan across the face and vanished like smoke." She laughed, low and warm. "I like him already."

The maids had gathered around the screen too. There were three of them, dark-haired and silent, in neat black uniforms, and they moved like people who had not always been maids. One of them, Noor, had drifted close enough to touch the screen. Another was already reaching for her sidearm, the habit of a woman who had spent a decade expecting trouble.

"Leave it," Fleur said without looking. "He's not a threat. He's a guest."

"A guest who just broke into the private wing," Desideria Vance said. She was the quiet one. Pale, still, watching the screens with the flat intensity of a sniper waiting on a …