The ballroom of the Hilton Anatole shimmered, a sea of sequins and starched collars. From Valerius’s position near the back of the room, the dais was clearly visible. The Governor of Texas was winding down a painfully generic introduction, his voice a low drone beneath the clinking of champagne flutes. Valerius, a tall and striking man known to most only by that single name, stood apart from the crowd like a ghost in a tailored tuxedo, observing the political theater with the detached amusement of someone who had seen governments rise from dust and return to it. The President’s arrival was imminent.

To Valerius, the air was thick with the usual psychic static of a crowd this size: ambition, greed, boredom, lust. He filtered it out as a subconscious act, as natural to him as breathing.