After the Glasshouse

The candle did not burn down in the Glasshouse; it remembered. Nessa Foley discovered that at 03:17 on a Tuesday morning, barefoot on a floor that had once been polished for ministers, donors, mourning parents, and men who knew how to say the word transparency without ever letting light touch them. The white candle stood in the centre of the west archive table, no taller than her hand, its flame held upright inside the draught as if the air had signed a contract not to disturb it.

This title is part of After the Glasshouse, Book 2.