His arms were still slightly raised, hovering in the empty air where he had expected to catch his daughter.
He slowly, mechanically lowered his arms.
His violet eyes, usually cold and calculating, were currently wide, staring at the space where Seraphina had been, and then tracking her path to where she was currently snuggled deeply, happily, blissfully in the arms of another woman.
The infamous, bottomless vinegar jar inside the Archduke's soul did not just tip over; it detonated with the force of a magical explosive.
'She... she ran past me,' Kaelus's internal monologue whispered, a sensation of profound, staggering heartbreak piercing his chest. 'I held my arms out. I was prepared for impact. And she used evasive maneuvers to bypass my perimeter. She chose the amber silk over the midnight velvet.'
The ambient temperature in the drawing room plummeted by twenty degrees.
