It happened again over the following days, not as a sudden storm but as a slow, insidious seepage she couldn't quite stem. Small observations that she found herself cataloguing with more precision than she cared to admit, each one a tiny prick of irritation beneath her skin.
She noticed the junior maids first. Two of them, girls who usually moved through the household like frightened mice, had developed an increasingly elaborate repertoire of excuses to visit the training hall during Rex's sessions.
They brought refreshments that didn't need chilled water when the servants had already delivered fresh casks and honeyed pastries that seemed suspiciously out of season. They would linger just a heartbeat too long, their eyes darting toward the sweat-slicked muscle of his back as he drove a practice blade through a training dummy with bone-crushing force.
