Aveline stopped.
Does he really know who I am?
She wasn't blind to what had just happened. She knew she had done something. She had felt it, even if she couldn't name it. She had held him in place… with his own shadow. The memory of it still lingered in her fingertips like a fading echo.
She wanted to understand it. But not from him.
Her fingers tightened protectively around Hamilton.
Slowly… she turned.
Edric had already stilled. His hands, which had briefly tensed, loosened again at his sides. He could feel Kael watching, unbothered, almost trusting, and that alone unsettled him more than the display of power he had just witnessed.
Because Edric knew better.
He had lived too long, read too much, seen too many things buried in records no one spoke of anymore.
She was not normal. And that made her dangerous. But how dangerous? Was she dangerous enough to be a calamity?
"You misunderstand me," he said.
