Phei did not react... his face did not move. His eyes did not widen. His breathing did not change. Across the room, Cassiopeia — who had spent the last several days learning her master's microexpressions with the cold, professional diligence watched Phei's features stay exactly as they had been and understood completely.
Phei had not reacted.
Phei was also not denying it.
He was surprised.
Surprised in a register that lived underneath the face — too well trained, too ancient, too dragon to let the surface betray him — but that shifted every calculation happening in the room behind it like tectonic plates grinding in hell.
Cassiopeia could see it in the stillness itself. Phei had gone too still. An unsurprised man would have resumed moving by now. A surprised man would have flinched. Phei had simply become the calm eye of a storm that had not yet decided how it would annihilate the world.
Inside Phei's head, a quieter, colder catastrophe was taking place.
Derek.
