For a heartbeat, Aveline could not move at all. The word struck her with a force so sudden and precise that it seemed to split the silence open.
Leveret. The name Lucien had given her.
The name that had already begun to feel unsettling in ways she could not explain. And now here it was again, tied to something old and hidden and far more important than she had realized.
Her heart nearly stopped. She didn't want to think of the implications of that.
Aveline lifted her eyes to Aelion, searching his face for some sign that this was a mistake, a coincidence, a cruelly strange overlap of history. But he looked utterly certain. And that certainty made the weight of the moment settle deeper into her chest.
Something old had just brushed against something new.
And Aveline, for the first time in a long time, had the unsettling feeling that she had just stepped too close to the edge of a secret that had been waiting for her all along.
