Heiko walked away from the castle like a storm barely held at bay, each step echoing like a war drum inside his skull as he tried, Moon Goddess, he tried, to calm the rising waves of fury that still surged in his blood.
The morning had begun deceptively well: he had felt oddly composed, unnaturally calm, as though something in him had settled overnight into a rare and precious quiet. But now, after what had happened with the dressmaker, he realized he had been foolish, he had lowered his guard, thinking, hoping, that peace would last. But the truth struck him like a whip to the back: he had only been sitting on a ticking bomb. And it exploded the moment that man tried to raise a hand toward her.
He didn’t even remember walking out of the castle grounds. One moment, he was handing River
