The envoy moved deeper into the hall, the twenty-one students spreading in deliberate, rehearsed rhythm — nobles from every edge of the Lorian Empire. Some carried themselves with rigid decorum, others with lazy arrogance, but all of them bore the quiet confidence of those handpicked to represent their bloodlines.
Yet no one looked at them.
Not truly.
Because all eyes had settled on two.
Adrian Lorian.
Isolde Valoria.
The prince and the saint.
Adrian moved like power made flesh—his presence neither overbearing nor aggressive, but sovereign. The kind of presence that made people part without knowing why. His jaw held no softness. His hands, gloved and relaxed at his sides, needed no flourish to command attention. He simply was—and that was enough.
Isolde, beside him, embodied the poetry of perfection. Not warm, not cold. A serene dusk between extremes. Her skin seemed spun from opaline glass, her smile the kind that broke hearts while appearing too chaste to know how.
