The carriage wheels had scarcely ceased their revolution when Damon was already at the door, his hand on the handle, his shoulder blocking the light in a posture that might have been read as eager had he been capable of such transparency.
He was not.
What he was capable of was performance and today it demanded that Princess Ivy Cassia be received with an enthusiasm that bordered on the unseemly.
"My dear Princess." He pulled the door wide, offered his hand, his smile, the full beam of his political charm. Very, very pleasant. "Iondora's walls have never looked so well. They were waiting for you, I suspect. Stone has its preferences."
Ivy descended gracefully, unhurriedly. She, after all, had never once in her life worried about the stability of her footwear. Her hand in his was cool and dry.
She was, as always, very, very beautiful. You know, it suggested generations of selective breeding and possibly some eldritch bargain with symmetry itself.
