Alexei balanced on the arm of the couch, one boot heel tapping a lazy rhythm against polished stone.
The penthouse breathed around him—fire whispering in the hearth, the fridge humming behind steel, the greenhouse fans on the roof turning a soft, steady current that the walls barely let through.
He watched frost crystals knit and unknit at the corner of a window pane and smiled as if they were performing for him alone.
Sera's words still hung in the air like it hadn't been a day since she rocked all their world with four simple words: Fire. Ice. Healer. Reaver.
He had met her gaze during that conversation and offered the grin everyone expected.
The grin that told friends and enemies alike that everything amused him, that knives kept their points when they were tipped with humor.
The grin had not been a mask this time.
It had been relief.
Freedom, even.
You think the leash slipped because the handler cannot tug it anymore?
