He left the councilroom as if he had torn the sun from the sky.
The scrape of a chair hitting stone cracked the stunned silence like a gunshot. Heads turned. Hands stilled mid-gesture. Men who had argued like titans moments before now looked small and uncertain, clustered around maps and ink-stained ledgers as if the world had shifted beneath their feet.
Levan moved with the kind of speed that belonged to a different life, like the terrible swiftness of a man answering a summons only his heart could hear. Marion fell into step at his shoulder like a steady shadow to his storm and the two of them vanished down the obsidian corridor, boots striking the floor in a single, relentless rhythm.
"Are you certain she was missing?" Levan's voice was low, almost strangled.
Marion nodded, eyes forward. "I wouldn't have come to you otherwise, Your Highness."
Levan's hand twitched at his side, the weight of his chest threatening to drag him into panic.
