'Soren... He is hiding something.'
Ethea squinted her eyes.
Perhaps he was altering her meals with some kind of rare ingredient, or the food itself possessed an innate, restorative property. The latter felt far more likely.
As the thoughts swirled, another detail she had quietly filed away began to surface. It was a bizarre phenomenon she had noticed around the day when they changed their surname, one she had been thinking about but couldn't find the time to bring up.
'...It's certainly strange.'
Whenever she was near Soren, the agonizing pressure in her body would recede. The constant, burning ache in her mana circuits would dull just enough for her to speak without straining, her thoughts would clear, and she could move her head and fingers with a fluid ease that usually eluded her.
When all of these anomalies were lined up together, the conclusion became inescapable.
Everything pointed directly to Soren.
'But how?'
