Third person's POV
When Rowan’s phone buzzed on the glass table beside him, he didn’t look at it at first. He was in the middle of sorting through the day’s reports, half-distracted, half-irritated by the way the night had dragged on. But he got another notification again. The message came from an unlisted number. It was a picture sent to him. The photo attached was blurry at the edges, snapped from a distance, but Rowan recognized the two figures instantly.
In it was Liora and Zaian. They were sitting in a warm-lit restaurant, leaning slightly toward each other as they spoke. Zaian had a faint smile on his face. Liora’s head was bowed slightly, her expression soft, soft in a way Rowan rarely got to see. Rowan’s jaw tightened, his grip on the phone hardening.
He didn’t need to g
