"I am perfectly fine, Rebeca," Seraphina stammered slightly, clearing her throat and straightening her back in a desperate attempt to regain her proud and aristocratic composure.
"Just a little insomnia. I believe something I ate at dinner last night didn't sit well with me. Indigestion, that's all. There's no reason for alarm."
As she uttered that flimsy excuse, I calmly raised my cup of dark, bitter coffee to my lips.
I fixed my gaze directly on her over the rim of the white porcelain.
A cold, enigmatic, predatory, and piercing gaze that penetrated directly into her mind.
Seraphina felt the physical weight of my attention crushing her.
Her face flushed slightly in a mixture of shame and muscle memory, and she shrank her shoulders by an invisible fraction of an inch, displaying a veiled submission that only the two of us in that vast hall understood perfectly.
