Lilith POV
She woke up different.
Not dramatically. Not in a way she could point to immediately and name.
Just....different.
Like something had shifted in the night while she was sleeping and she was only now catching up to it.
She lay there for a moment.
Stared at the ceiling.
The bond was warm in her chest the way it always was. Nicholas at one end of it....steady, familiar, the particular weight of him she could recognize anywhere now.
But there were two other things sitting alongside it this morning.
Not the bond. Not yet.
Something else.
Warmer than yesterday. Closer than yesterday.
She pressed her hand flat against her sternum.
Felt all three threads.
Thought about Sebastian's hands on her hips.
Lucian's golden eyes looking up at her.
She got up before she could think about it any more than that.
Agnes was in the kitchen.
