There was always a formula.
'She would say this, when I brought up the comparison between our books…'
Lucavion's mind flickered, straying further from the ballroom and the polished rot of nobility. A part of him was still watching the way the air shifted around Priscilla—still aware of the quiet threads being pulled. But another part—sharper, more amused—had already drifted into the archives of memory.
His sister had always been fond of reverse harem novels.
Not in a quiet, embarrassed way, but in the manner of someone who had built a private cathedral out of glittery covers and dog-eared pages. She devoured them between study sessions, during banquets she faked illness to skip, and in the corners of the library where even the archivists turned a blind eye.
Lucavion, on the other hand, read them out of spite.
Well—spite and curiosity.
