_Author’s POV_
Virella closed the study door behind her and walked down the corridor toward her room.
She was smiling before she reached the stairs.
Not the smile she wore for Kaelen, the one calibrated to look like concern and soft-heartedness. This one was real. Small and private and entirely for herself.
She had sat across from him and watched him stare at his drink and talk about Cole and the frozen accounts and the declined request from Alaric’s office, and she had kept her face perfectly arranged the entire time, and it had been, if she was being honest with herself, one of the more satisfying evenings she had spent in this house in a very long time.
He looked terrible.
Not just tired, but hollowed out. The m kind of exhaustion that came from having too many thing
