He crossed the study. His hand found the back of Lucian's neck, the grip firm, warm, the grip of a father whose physical vocabulary had been limited to this gesture for seventeen years and whose gesture said everything his mouth had spent thirty years learning to withhold.
"You will be a great king." Atlas's voice was low. For him only. "Greater than me. I knew it when you were fourteen and dismantled Vellos in three moves. I knew it when you protected your sister without her knowing. I knew it when the priestess told me the Goddess had chosen you, because the Goddess has excellent taste and the excellence was visible from the first night I held you."
Lucian's jaw trembled. The trembling was almost invisible, the micro-fracture of a composure that had been holding this conversation together through discipline and was being undone by the one weapon he had no defense against.
His father's pride.
