He looked up, his eyes meeting the Archduke's.
Kaelus was not listening.
The Reaper's brain had completely shut down its political subroutines. His mind was focused on the Capital Estate.
'It has been forty-eight hours,' Kaelus's inner monologue raged, the bottomless well of his fatherly paranoia overflowing into a catastrophic flood. 'She has been awake for two days without my supervision. Sebastian is competent, but he lacks an eye. What if she decided to climb the draperies? What if the Empress's spy attempted to offer her poisoned candy? What if she had a nightmare about the demons?'
The thought of Seraphina sitting in the massive, unfamiliar estate, looking around for him and finding only empty hallways, drove a spike of pure, unadulterated agony directly into his chest.
He had played their game.
He had sat through their posturing.
His patience was officially, violently extinct.
CRACK.
