Jesse's breath hitched before she even realized she'd stopped breathing.
The moment the doors opened, before the light even caught the full of him, she knew.
No voice announced him. No title rang from the lips of heralds. But it didn't matter.
She felt him.
Her eyes—sharp, trained to read shifts in battlefield tempo, in hallway politics, in the subtle flick of power between nobles—froze.
Because there he was.
Lucavion.
And everything stopped.
She couldn't remember what the other nobles around her were doing. Couldn't remember Isolde's soft voice or Adrian's faintly muttered remarks, couldn't hear the scratch of polished boots or the music still weaving in the distance.
Because he had stepped into the hall, and the rest of the world had dulled.
