"The night gave exactly what was required, Kaelen," I replied, my voice steady, though my body felt heavy—saturated with the physical memory of him.
I sat down, and that's when I felt the weight of the table's collective gaze. Eleven pairs of hollow, Architect eyes looked at me with a mixture of envy and horror. They could smell it on me. They could see the "Resonance" vibrating in my skin. I wasn't a "Husk" like them. I was the Sun.
Across from me, Dorian Valerius was a statue of frozen glass.
He was dressed in a midnight-blue suit, his silver hair slicked back, but his eyes... his eyes were bloodshot, the crystalline blue fractured by a dark, sleepless hunger. He wasn't eating. He was staring at the mark on my neck with an intensity that felt like a physical violation.
