"You still haven't told her about Nyrielle…"
Maela knew her daughters too well to take Jocelynn's comment as a simple reminder that there was another empress besides Ashlynn in the fledgling Bloodroot Empire. The tone in her voice was obvious that even Micheline, who had only met her cousin on a few occasions, noticed the playfulness in her voice that clearly implied there was more to Ashlynn's relationship with Nyrielle than they'd been told about so far.
Of course, it was far from the first clue Micheline had caught this evening. There was a softness in Ashlynn's voice whenever she spoke about the vampire she was bound to. Beyond that, when she spoke about binding herself to the vampire for an eternity to achieve her vengeance, Ashlynn had referred to the vampire affectionately as 'Nyri' rather than Nyrielle, which was all that Micheline needed to hear to understand that there was a closeness between Ashlynn and the Midnight Empress.
