Noel walked back into the ballroom with his family and the first thing he noticed was that everyone had stopped moving.
Three trumpet notes and the room had reorganised itself — the crowd pulling back from the centre, bodies turning toward the main entrance, heads lowering. The orchestra had stopped mid-phrase. Servants stood against walls. Three hundred people in formal clothes, all looking in the same direction.
The royal family had arrived.
Noel looked for Cedric.
He found him across the room — white coat, standing with his brothers, already looking back at Noel with the slight lift of an eyebrow that meant I see you found them.
Noel exhaled.
His grandfather was moving.
Not toward the crowd. Toward the royal dais.
Noel watched him walk directly to the king — past the guards, past the assembled nobles, straight through the space that everyone else was carefully leaving empty — and place his hand on the king's shoulder like a man greeting an old friend.
