Lucian’s POV…
The mansion was quiet again. The kind of quiet that made every sound feel heavier than it should. The low hum of electricity filled the air, mixing with the faint rustle of trees outside my window. I should have been reading through reports or checking the state of the borders, but the words on the screen blurred into one long, meaningless stretch.
All I could see were her eyes. The way they’d widened when I told her the truth about her parents. The disbelief. The hurt. The silence that came after.
She had looked at me as if I had pulled the floor from under her, and in some way, I had.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temple, trying to push her out of my head. It was pointless. Her scent was everywhere. A soft, lingering trace of something sweet and maddening. Lil
