Lysandra POV
I wanted to offer to go with him, to help, to be the comfort he couldn’t name but he was a hurricane of distraction, and I knew he wouldn’t enjoy me there. Still, I tried the easy route.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, my voice light with the thrill of potential gossip every secret was a treasure, and I was good at turning scraps into power.
He never gave me everything. He never had to. I collected the slivers he tossed me, stitched them together with what Lucen and, occasionally, Olyssia fed me, and from those fragments I built the whole picture. They all underestimated me. That was the mistake that would cost them.
“Not now,” Auren growled, and my smile faltered as he brushed past. He kept walking, as though I were nothing more than air. My hands curled into fis
