SOREN
I hadn't slept.
The darkness of my chambers had offered no sanctuary, only a canvas for the images that had been seared into my mind since the previous night. Every time I closed my eyes, the garden returned... the silver filigree of the arches, the diamond-dust paths, and the three of them.
Eris. Caelen. Rael.
They had looked like a portrait of a life I could never give her. A perfect, painful circle of shared history and common blood. From my vantage point at the high window, I hadn't been able to hear their words, but I hadn't needed to.
I had seen the way Caelen reached for her, the desperate, physical hunger of a man trying to reclaim a world he had foolishly discarded.
And I had seen Eris... my Eris... lift the boy into her arms with a tenderness that made my own chest ache with a dull, hollow thud.
