"Some journeys begin not with desire, but with the quiet certainty that staying still is a kind of dying."
I stood outside the King's private solar, the heavy oak door a physical barrier between the two lives I led: the external persona of the Crown's strategist, and the internal reality of Elias's twin. My hand paused inches from the wood, gathering not courage, but control. Control was everything. If I allowed the slightest trace of hesitation or personal distress into my aura, Elias would sense it immediately, and the King would use it as leverage to deny my request. The air in the hallway of the Citadel's inner sanctum was cool, a sharp contrast to the room inside, which I knew would be stiflingly warm, Alaric's preferred temperature. He required heat to offset the constant cold of his strategic calculations. I was relying on that warmth, that sense of safe domesticity, to frame my request.
