Her voice lingered in the air like incense, light, fragrant, and unmistakably deliberate. The syllables of her final sentence drifted gently, and yet with a resonance that clung to the edges of Ludwig's thoughts like moisture clinging to cold glass.
Ludwig didn't respond right away. He let the silence stretch, not out of control, but calculation. His eyes remained fixed on her, unblinking, though his thoughts churned beneath the surface like murky water beneath clear ice. She was watching him too, but not in the way mortals often did. Her gaze wasn't probing, it was patient, as if she already knew the answers and merely waited for him to arrive at them.
