After the unsettling chaos of the morning, after the sharp, piercing stares and the flushed shame that clung to her like a second skin, River found herself seated once more at the long obsidian breakfast table in the smaller dining hall of the west wing, across from the very man who had turned her world into a slow-burning chaos.
Heiko sat in his usual seat, posture relaxed but unreadable, as though the night before, and the awkward morning that followed, hadn’t just cracked her entire reality into fragile pieces.
The tension between them was like a coiled storm, heavy and charged, yet neither of them dared to speak as the first course was placed before them. Plates of delicately sliced fruit, warm pastries, and honeyed tea sat untouched for the first few minutes, both of them mechanic
