CHAPTER 191
The heavy framed doors to Lucian's study swung open, the atmosphere shifting instantly from the airy grandness of the halls to something dense, academic, and suffocatingly still.
Isabella stopped just past the threshold, her breath catching as her eyes found the source of her recent frustration.
Stacked in neat, imposing towers across his desk and the adjacent low tables were the missing volumes.
There they were—the dark, leather-bound histories and crumbling scrolls she had nearly broken her neck trying to find on the upper shelves of the library.
She walked toward the desk, her fingers hovered over a particularly thick tome with a tarnished silver-clasp binding as soon as she reached them.
"You've been busy," she noted, her voice flat, masking the sudden spike of adrenaline that made her pulse flutter in her throat.
Lucian moved behind her, his presence a cold, steady weight that seemed to pull at the very air around her.
