And yet within the square—everything had narrowed. Pulled inward. Reduced to a single, terrible center.
Liora in his arms.
Nyla, silent and unmoving, held against Marcus's chest.
And the silence that gathered around what had been done to them.
---
Thessian lowered his gaze again.
To Liora.
For a long moment, the square ceased to exist for him. The ministers. The guards. The wolves. The city. All of it fell away beneath the weight of what he held. His attention did not flicker. Did not shift. It rested on her as though there were nothing else left worth seeing.
The bruising was not hidden. It marked her openly—along her arms, beneath her jaw, shadowed beneath the skin in ways that spoke not of a single blow but of repetition. The restraint marks around her wrists were worse: raw, torn, the flesh broken where iron had held too long, too tightly. Crusted blood traced fine lines across her palms.
And there was something else. Something more difficult to name.
The stillness.
