Her breathing slowed.
She blinked again and looked at him. He hadn't moved. He still sat with his usual poise, the back of one hand lightly brushing a carved fork as he chose another petal. His jaw moved with unhurried grace. He drank from a wooden cup with the ease of someone who'd done it a hundred times.
But he was larger now.
And smaller. At once something impossibly old, and still the same annoying professor who once tossed a blackened chimera liver at her during dissecting lab and said, "See? Elegant."
She laughed. It came out broken, a single huff of breath, but it was real. Then she looked around.
The elves had noticed.
Several of them watched Draven now with narrowed eyes. Their expressions unreadable, but their postures… not relaxed. Calculating. Weighing.
She leaned toward him, whispering from the side of her mouth. "They're staring."
"Yes."
"Do something."
