The silence in the cavern was a heavy, suffocating blanket. The only sounds were the faint, ragged breathing of Fenris and Selene, and the distant, dripping echo of water. Seraphina stood frozen, her rapier held in a hand that felt strangely numb. Before her, Edward stood with his hands offered, his posture one of patient surrender.
Her mind, usually a fortress of logic and decisive action, was a chaotic storm. The entire world, as she understood it, had been turned upside down in the span of a few minutes. She had come here expecting to play a dangerous game of politics and intrigue, to use a monster to catch a greater monster. She had not expected to witness that monster devour a god, dismantle an army with the effortless grace of a master painter, and then, with the fate of the world in his hands, quietly offer to honor a promise he could now so easily ignore.
