The room remained unbearably still.
No one spoke.
I couldn't.
My fingers had curled so tightly around the fabric covering my stomach that they had begun to ache, yet I couldn't make them let go. The words The Council echoed through my head over and over until they no longer sounded like words at all, but rather the low, vibrating toll of a bell warning us that the outside world had finally breached the walls.
Darius finally broke his lethal stare away from Zane. He closed the distance between his desk and the couch in three long, deliberate strides, his shadow falling over me before I could even look up. The terrifying aura he had directed at Zane vanished the moment he reached me, replaced by a tense, focused gravity.
He dropped to one knee in front of the couch, bringing himself eye-level with me. His large hands came up, gently but firmly wrapping around my wrists, his warm thumbs stroking over my knuckles until the iron grip I had on my shirt began to loosen.
