For several seconds, no one spoke.
The old registry office seemed to have grown smaller. The empty shelves, the frozen brazier, the documents trapped in transparent ice, and the surrendered men formed a scene too strange even for Arven. Havelock was on his knees, still trying to understand why a simple name had made the temperature in the room plummet. Morgana was the first to realize the reaction had not come from an external threat. It had come from Damon.
Ester was already holding his wrist.
Not delicately.
With enough force to pull him back if necessary.
"Damon," she said, low. "Breathe."
He breathed.
The cold receded a little, but not completely. It remained beneath his skin, compressed, alert, like an animal that had heard something move in the dark. The elemental root pulsed in his chest in slow, heavy intervals. It was not pain. It was not ordinary warning. It was recognition. A recognition he did not understand, and that irritated him more than he would have liked.
