The moment the door clicked shut behind them, the world beyond it seemed to vanish as though it had never existed at all.
The distant echoes of music, the muted laughter of nobles, the steady rhythm of celebration that had filled Valkoron's halls only moments ago—all of it dissolved into silence, swallowed whole by the privacy of the chamber they now stood in.
Only silence remained in the enclosed room they were currently standing in. And within that silence, there was him.
Valerian stood before her like a man barely holding himself together, as though restraint itself had become something painful to maintain.
The faint glow of torchlight along the walls carved shadows across his face, but even shadow could not conceal the tension in him. It lived in his posture, in the stillness of his hands, in the way his breathing no longer followed any natural rhythm.
Aurelia had barely turned toward him when he was on her again.
