Lena's POV
I noticed three days after the midnight sitting room.
We were at breakfast — our strange, quiet routine of it, the one that had settled between us without either of us deciding it would. Damian was reading, I was eating, the morning doing its usual thing with the light through the window.
He reached across the table for the coffee pot and his sleeve pulled back.
Just for a moment. Just enough.
A scar ran along the back of his right hand — thick, pale against his skin, the kind that doesn't fade with time because whatever made it went deep enough to mean business. It disappeared beneath his cuff before I could trace its full length.
He caught me looking.
He said nothing. Just poured his coffee and returned to his newspaper as though I hadn't seen anything at all.
I let it
