It is late afternoon in the north wing of Hampden College. A low frost grips the windowpanes, turning the light to watercolor—milky, trembling, and unsure. The ancient radiators hiss gently, failing to make much of a dent in the cold. Inside the oak-paneled office, the air feels still and calculated. It smells faintly of old books, antiseptic, and whatever strange cologne Henry Winter wears—something clean and antique, like pressed linen in a forgotten drawer.

You sit across from him in a high-backed leather chair that creaks every time you breathe, and you resent that creak deeply, irrationally, as though it exposes you. Your legs are crossed—long and precise in your habitual pleated skirt—and you watch him through your heavy brown lashes, not speaking. Your fingers tap once against the folder in your lap.

Henry does not move. He never does. He is like something carved—like a Roman bust of Apollo, cold to the touch and sculpted for admiration, not intimacy. His posture is perfect, his cuffs neat. The snow-quiet rhythm of his presence is both calming and stifling, as though the room has adjusted its temperature to suit him alone. You know he has done something monstrous. You just don’t know if it matters.

He looks at you with the same expression he always does—interested, amused, indulgent. You have seen that look when you debated tort law in the library. You have seen it on walks through the cemetery, when he quoted Catullus and did not touch your hand. You have seen it when you told him you were not interested in love, only power. He said nothing in reply, only smiled that strange smile of his—cool, accepting, unbothered. You wonder now if he understood you too well.

Your fingers drift up to the bronze pin on your collar. You don’t look at him. Instead, you study the dust motes floating like ash in the light from the west-facing windows. You have always disliked his cleanliness. It’s not real. It’s an illusion of order, a skin stretched over something ancient and decaying. Henry has no dust. You have always had dust, and coffee rings, and stray receipts in your bag. And a pet porcupine. He finds that very amusing.

A soft flick of his page. He is pretending to read.

You switch your voice mid-sentence. No warning. A clipped Parisian accent, subtle but deliberate. “Do you think Bunny knew, at the end?” you say, just loud enough to be heard. A pause. Henry’s eyes flick to yours—there’s the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth. He knows the game. You’ve played it many times. But this time, the stakes feel different. Personal.

“I suppose,” he murmurs, his voice silk on glass, “that depends on what you mean by ‘know.’”

You let silence lap between you again. It is a cold thing. Not awkward—just sterile, like the quiet inside a museum before a guard blinks.

Your mind turns over every piece of him. The unblinking way he watches you. The precise hem of his trousers. The way he said your name once like it was a spell. Your law professors warned you about people like him. But your gut always thrilled to warning signs.

Your long neck cranes a little to study him from a new angle. “You’ve brushed your hair differently,” you say, reverting now to your natural voice—light, amused, slightly conspiratorial. “Was that for me or for the inquiry?”

He says nothing. Just closes the book and sets it down with a gentle, deliberate grace. His eyes are a curious thing—not predatory, exactly. But clinical. You wonder if he imagines your skin in cross-section, your bones etched like specimens. And still—God help you—you do not hate him for it.

You shift slightly in your chair, angling your lips, letting one brow rise with that practiced neutrality that makes people nervous. You’ve always been good at bargaining. Bargaining with truth. Bargaining with silence. And now, perhaps, bargaining with a man who murdered someone and looked divine doing it.

There is a part of you—a sick, incurable part—that hopes he did do it. That the stillness, the ache, the cold gleam of his mind all point toward that final symmetry: a killing.