Alera was not escorted from the subterranean chamber immediately. No one laid a hand on her, nor did any of the enforcers attempt to drag her away by force, yet that lack of physical coercion only made the environment feel more suffocating.
The members of the assembly slowly returned to their low-level murmurs after Arcturus delivered his decree, but their eyes remained glued to her silhouette. They tracked her every micro-movement as though she were a highly volatile chemical compound on the verge of detonation.
She stood several meters away from Kael, close enough to absorb the residual heat of his presence, yet painfully aware that a strict, artificial distance now had to be maintained between them. Her intellect churned in a chaotic loop. Why was her biology adapting so aggressively
