Ah, dear reader, if love were a flame, then this was the moment it finally began to devour its vessel.
They were still dancing, the Queen and her Consort, orbiting the Eternal Pyre like two stars long past the point of burning for one another, and yet still bound by gravity's cruel insistence. The fire between them flickered... not bright, not warm... but strained and desperate, like an ember refusing to die even when the wind howled for its extinction.
Caelen's steps were steady, practiced, the kind of motion that came not from affection but from obligation. His gaze, however, was faithless. It drifted, again and again, over her shoulder, toward the woman who waited in white and gold at the edge of the crowd.
Ophelia.
Her eyes flickering with unease as she watched them. Despite Caelen's watch over her, a silent defiance, a declaration of his unshaken love. That he saw her and her only. Yet... She could see something he didn't realize himself.
