Titania's twig flared pale blue in her hand, not with the erratic flicker of flame but with the calm, unwavering light of a star long past anger. A thread of smoke rose from the bark's split grain, coiling upward like incense at an altar.
Her expression did not shift. Eyes half-lidded, she regarded Ludwig as though measuring a single grain of sand before casting judgment on the whole desert. There was no heat in her stare only stillness. A stillness that unnerved in its simplicity, not born of grace or serenity, but of utter confidence. The certainty that what would come next had already happened in her mind a hundred times, and the outcome would not waver.
