"Hello."
The sound hit Elara like a blade slipped under old scars.
Her breath seized.
Her heart lurched once—hard enough to ache.
For a single, excruciating heartbeat she thought—
'She knows.'
'She sees me.'
'She's speaking to me.'
The air around her tightened; her shoulders stiffened despite herself. Illusion or not, she felt naked under those familiar eyes—exposed, cornered, dragged back into a past she had sworn she would conquer.
Her fingers curled again.
But then—
A shift.
A soft scrape of a chair behind her.
A faint, amused exhale she recognized instantly.
Lucavion.
Of course.
'Not me.'
Isolde wasn't speaking to Elowyn Caerlin.
She wasn't speaking to her sister she had destroyed.
She wasn't speaking to the girl she had left in chains beneath the banquet hall.
She was speaking to him.
Her greeting, that delicate smile Elara could hear in the tone alone, was aimed past her shoulder.
