Three seconds passed.
Then the pressure vanished. Like a door closing. Like a wind dying. One moment Vespera's presence was filling the space between them, and the next it was just a tired woman on a couch looking at her son's girlfriend.
"The pleasure is mine," Vespera said.
Her gaze moved from Nyx to the rest of them. Aria. Luna. Bastet. Calypso. One by one, without hurry.
"I'm grateful to you for taking care of my son throughout all these months, future daughters-in-law."
The words landed like a detonation in a library.
Every woman in the room felt it at the same time. A flutter low in the chest, a rush of heat to the face, the unmistakable sensation of butterflies erupting in places they had no business being, because the Shadow Monarch had just called them daughters and she hadn't even blinked while doing it.
Aria was off the couch before anyone realized she'd moved.
