The silence that followed was a different species of silence from any that had existed in the room previously.
Evangeline's mouth opened.
Something moved behind her golden eyes—a flash of something volcanic, white-hot, ancient in the way that geological catastrophes are ancient—
And then her jaw closed.
She couldn't speak.
Not because she lacked the words. She possessed ten thousand years of words. She had delivered proclamations that ended bloodlines.
She had whispered sentences that dismantled the sanity of S-rank fighters in under a minute.
But right now, in this specific second, the machinery that connected her absolute certainty of self to the words available to express it had simply ground to a complete, unprecedented halt.
Her hand, still resting loosely at her side, slowly curled.
The pale, elegant fingers folded inward, the knuckles whitening incrementally until the delicate bones pressed sharp and prominent against the thin skin.
