What had she done, really, to be regarded like this?
Did she not deserve more than that? More than the flat, dismissive, unadorned hatred in his eyes when he'd turned to face her in the dim penthouse — eyes that had once, not so very long ago, found her across impossible distances and winked.
Winked! With that insufferable, sardonic, devastatingly deliberate amusement that made her grip tighten on Yūrei no Kiba's hilt and her pulse do something in her throat that ten thousand years of martial discipline should have rendered categorically impossible.
Where was the teasing? Where were the games — the provocations, the calculated little moments when he'd look directly at the coordinates Eira had furnished him and let her feel his gaze landing on her like a hand placed on the back of her neck?
Where was the boy who had made a sport of reminding the invisible assassin that she was not as invisible as she believed?
Consort couldn't help asking herself all of this.
