Unlike the dinner before, breakfast was a tense but mercifully silent affair. Alios noticeably ate nothing on the table, only taking a few sips from the water jug. It was the sort of behaviour that Seraphina would have never dared to do back in her old life. Turning down a host’s freely offered food went against all the sacred rules of hospitality. It was something that would have made Otraena faint from shock, made Sangye explode with reprimands, and gotten her ears twisted by any one of her previous etiquette tutors.
She thought back to her time at finishing school and masked the instinctive flinch of pain. She thought she’d done a good job – she’d gotten a lot of practice hiding her emotions – but Alios glanced over at her with a frown. Seraphina met him with a smile, trying to projec
