He stood. The motion was slow — the deliberate, weighted slowness of a creature for whom time was an inconvenience rather than a constraint. He walked to the end of the table. Stopped beside Clara's chair.
Clara flinched. The movement was small — a tightening of her shoulders, a pulling inward, the instinctive contraction of a prey animal that has been sitting in a room full of predators and has just felt one of them move closer. She did not look up. She kept her eyes on her plate, on the food she had not touched, on the napkin she was gripping beneath the table with both hands.
Morcant looked down at her. Then at Seraphyne. Then at Branimir.
"The mortal girl," he said. "The one you parade in your wife's gowns. The one you seat at your table like a trophy. Is this your answer to Seraphyne's transgression? A thrall of your own? A toy to match hers?"
"She is not a toy," Branimir said. "She is — "
