CHAPTER 107
The passage of forty-eight hours had turned the master suite into a sanctuary of stagnant air.
Outside, the world might have been turning, and Marco might have been fending off the prying eyes of the council, but inside these four walls, time had congealed like drying blood.
Lucian sat on the edge of the velvet couch positioned across from the bed, his posture rigid, his dark silk robe discarded in favor of a fresh shirt that he had left unbuttoned at the collar.
He didn't care about the decorum of his station anymore. His eyes, rimmed with the exhaustion of a man who refused to succumb to the "thousands of years" of rest he feared, were fixed unblinkingly on the silhouette beneath the quilts.
Isabella hadn't stirred since her mid-sleep apology. She lay in a state that was neither sleep nor coma—a suspended animation where her body seemed to be reconfiguring itself on a molecular level.
