Alaric slowly turned her palm upward.
A deep cut stretched across the center of her hand where shattered glass had sliced through the skin.
Blood continued gathering rapidly along her pale fingers.
His jaw tightened immediately.
"You call this nothing?"
Elena looked away instead of answering.
And suddenly—
Alaric noticed something else.
Her eyes.
Slightly red.
As though she had rubbed them harshly moments earlier.
The realization unsettled him unexpectedly.
Had she been crying?
No.
That didn't feel right.
Elena Vaughn didn't seem like someone who allowed herself to cry.
Yet something about her expression now—
the exhaustion, the silence, the way she avoided looking at him—
felt dangerously close to breaking.
Alaric's voice unconsciously softened afterward.
"You need stitches if the cut is deep."
Elena finally pulled her hand away from him gently.
"I've survived worse."
The sentence was quiet.
Too quiet.
And somehow—
