The northern silence still held the next day. No riders, no scouts, nothing on the horizon beyond the marker stones. Inside the temple the air had changed.
People moved differently in the upper corridors. Eyes lingered a fraction longer. Elizabeth and Selene passed each other in the halls with a new ease that the others noticed even if they could not name it.
Kaelara's claim from the morning still lingered in the way Aiden's shoulders sat and the faint marks on his throat that the high collar of his shirt only half-hid.
Elizabeth found him in the late afternoon.
She did not knock. She stepped into his private quarters, closed the door, and leaned against it for a moment as if the wood were the only thing keeping her upright. Her hair was down. The usual neat braid was gone.
She looked at him the way she had looked at him the night before when Selene's mouth had been on her, only now there was no one else in the room to share the weight.
"I need this," she said. "Just us."
