He couldn't. Hearing her use such simple, childlike words to describe the agonizing, bloody mess inside his chest was a completely different kind of torture. It proved that she wasn't completely blind; she could see his pain, but she was still entirely incapable of understanding 'why' he was bleeding.
Down at the guard line, Ken's dark eyes narrowed to slits as he watched the two of them from below. He couldn't hear their whispers over the ballroom music, but he could see the heavy, unblinking focus Elara was directing toward the northern prince. Mahir's ears gave a sharp twitch, his long dark tail lashing once against the stone floor in a low, territorial rumble. They didn't like the way she was looking at him. They didn't like that she was changing her own rules just to reach him.
