ELYRA
The silence after Seralyne left the hall was worse than the dirge horns.
Elyra stood in front of her mother with the fire at her back and the truth sitting in her throat like a stone she couldn't swallow and couldn't spit out. Maeven's amber eyes—not green like her father's, not green like Seralyne's, but the deep, warm amber of old honey and sharper instincts—hadn't left her face.
She already knows. She doesn't know what, but she knows something.
"Sit down, Elyra."
"I'd rather stand."
"I wasn't asking."
Elyra sat.
The chair by the hearth was her father's. Worn leather. One armrest darker than the other from thirty years of his hand resting on it while he argued with his steward, or laughed at his own jokes, or pulled Seralyne onto his lap when she was small and told her stories about the mountain lions until she fell asleep.
The leather was cold now. Nobody's warmth left in it.
