Zen stood perfectly still. He did not panic or react like he was taken by surprise even though he just was. He just turned around and looked at Valeria.
The silence stretched through the bedroom for ten agonizing seconds.
Then Valeria's composure cracked.
It was not an outburst of rage or the destructive anger of the Goddess of War that had destroyed entire fields of monsters in the past.
Instead it was like watching a thick pane of glass finally shattering at the seams after being strained by five centuries of pressure.
Valeria did not lunge at him with her blade. She slid off the plush velvet chair, her fake academy glasses forgotten, dropping his leather-bound notebook to the hardwood floor.
Her knees hit the ground with a thud. She crawled forward bridging the gap between them and pressed her forehead directly against Zen's legs.
Then she started talking in a voice Zen had never heard from her before.
