"…What were you two doing?"
Elara's throat tightened. Too quickly, she rose—though her legs still trembled, her cloak clinging damp to her shoulders. The words lodged somewhere between her chest and her mouth. She wanted to say training, or nothing, but none of it felt right. Instead, what bloomed inside her was something unfamiliar—sharp, defensive, like a hand curling protectively around something fragile.
Why defensive? She didn't know.
But she felt it.
Before the silence betrayed her, Lucavion's voice cut in. Smooth. Effortless. "Just some sparring. Nothing much."
He rolled the word sparring lazily on his tongue, as if it were obvious, as if the frost curling in fractured spirals around them were nothing more than chalk lines drawn for practice.
Selphine's gaze sharpened. "That… doesn't look like just sparring."
