"Are you okay?" Evelyn asked, her voice low as her eyes lingered on the queen.
Elunara exhaled, long and heavy, then raised a hand to her face as if to hide whatever expression had slipped through. "...Yeah. I apologize."
Her tone was steady, but her eyes shifted back to Emma.
The girl still had her head bent over the book, fingers flipping pages in quick succession. It wasn't normal reading.
Elunara knew the rhythm of study, the pauses when a mind wrestled with meaning, the quiet hesitations when a word forced you to stop and rethink.
Emma had none of that. Her movements were almost mechanical. Turn. Scan. Turn again.
It reminded Elunara of her own struggles—long hours wasted staring at the same passages, re-reading lines until frustration settled like poison in her chest.
She remembered when dark magic had first been explained to her, how natural it had sounded, but how merciless it had been in practice.
