“Yes, Ma’am.” He hesitated. “Your mother asked if you’d be coming by the hotel.”
I looked out at the Washington Monument, a white needle stitching the sky to the earth.
“Tell her I’ll be there for breakfast,” I said. “But tell her I’m bringing the bill for the mortgage.”
The agent cracked a rare, tiny smile. “Understood, General.”
I turned back to the room. The shift change was starting. A new group of officers was filing in, fresh-faced and ready for the next twelve hours of quiet war. I adjusted my uniform, feeling the crispness of the fabric, the weight of the stars, and the solid, undeniable reality of my own life.
I was Kira Collins. I was a daughter of a broken house, a graduate of a hard school, and a commander of the silent deep. I had spent my life waiting to be seen, only to realize that the only person whose gaze mattered was the one looking back at me from the glass.
I walked toward the exit, my boots echoing in the hall. The sound wasn’t a retreat; it was a march.
As I stepped out into the morning air, I saw a single white feather drifting down from a nest in the eaves of the Pentagon. It danced on the wind, fragile and light, before settling on the dark asphalt of the parking lot—a small, soft thing in a world built of stone and steel.
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