For a long, agonizing stretch of time, Evangeline didn't move. She remained rooted to the center of her sunlit solar, appearing as a magnificent, frozen statue while a violent storm raged behind her red eyes. The sunlight streaming through the stained glass felt heavy, almost suffocating, casting long, distorted shadows across the stone floor.
She was a prisoner to her own racing thoughts. One half of her mind—the logical, fiercely independent Queen who had survived court intrigues and bloody battlefields—insisted that Silver was merely playing his cruel, convoluted games. He was a jester, after all; his entire existence was built upon smoke, mirrors, and unraveling the sanity of those around him with calculated tricks.
He is a fool, she told herself, her fingernails digging so deeply into her palms that the skin threatened to break. A dying, delirious fool whose brain is rotting from the very toxin I saved him from.
