Keiser felt an all-consuming anger the instant his eyes met those ice-blue ones, the same eyes that haunted him deep in his bones.
He remembered the burn of her runes searing through his flesh, the way his body had felt like it was melting from the inside out, and the hollow ache in his chest as his dragonbone hilt sword had been the only thing keeping him upright.
He didn't even notice how his mana had somehow connected to her's, how Muzio's mana was now threaded to hers, a faint string linking their arms.
He was too consumed by that same mocking look on her face, the one she wore when she had once stood beside Gideon. He didn't notice that she was taller than she should have been, only because he was still standing on the floor above.
Nor did he see the dark haze of mana curling around her, mingling with blue, the same kind he had seen around Olga, seeping like smoke from the bleeding cuts beneath the cloak she wore.
