Part 1
For one crystalline moment, mother and son stood frozen in the candlelit chapel—she with her hand locked around his wrist like an iron manacle, he with his eyes blown wide in absolute, uncomprehending shock. The knife trembled between them, catching the golden light from a dozen votive candles.
"Mother—" Constantine's voice cracked. "How—you cannot—"
Helena's other hand moved.
It was not the movement of a lady who had spent decades signing documents and managing ministers. It was the movement of a trained warrior. Muscle memory carved into bone during years that Constantine had never known existed. Her palm struck the inside of his elbow at the precise angle her instructors had drilled into her—back when she was even younger than Constantine, still living under the shadow of her dominating mother, whom even her Emperor father had feared. Her mother had measured everything in power and viewed martial prowess as its foundation.
Constantine's arm buckled. His fingers spasmed open.
The knife clattered to the chapel floor with a sound like a bell tolling doom.
Before he could react—before he could even process what had happened—Helena's foot had already hooked behind his ankle. She pulled. Her other hand found his shoulder, applying pressure at the exact point where leverage transformed strength into irrelevance. Constantine, heir to the Gillyrian throne, went down like a puppet with severed strings.
He hit the stone floor hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
"You—" he gasped, staring up at her with eyes that no longer held calculation or resolve. Only bewilderment. Only the shattered remnants of every assumption he had ever made about the woman who bore him. "How—you are just..."
"Just what?" Helena's voice emerged steady despite the earthquake crumbling everything inside her chest. "Just a woman? Just a mother? Just a lady who spends her days in council chambers and her nights in prayer?" She stepped back, allowing him to breathe, watching him with eyes that had gone terribly, terribly cold. "So it seems you have decided to murder me, my son."
She tilted her head, and something in her expression made him flinch. She took a step closer, bending to retrieve the knife.
"But you never once thought to research me."
Constantine pushed himself to his elbows, chest heaving. "I assumed—"
"You assumed that you knew everything about me because I am your mother." Helena's voice grew increasingly tinged with sadness. "This is not how a future emperor should make high-stakes plans—by basing them on unresearched assumptions."
"If you had spent even the slightest effort learning our own family history, you would know how foolish your attempt was. If you were not my son, you would already be dead." Helena's voice was quiet. Flat. The voice of a woman speaking from somewhere very far away.
She looked down at her son—this boy she had carried beneath her heart, had nursed at her breast, had loved with every fiber of her being for sixteen years—and felt something inside her begin to crack.
"What has Gregorios promised you?" The words emerged softer now. Pleading. "What threats has he made? Tell me, Constantine. Whatever hold he has over you, we can break it together. Your uncle will forgive youthful foolishness if you come to him willingly, if you confess before—"
"Mother, you are too naïve. There is no turning back for me."
Constantine's voice had changed. The shock was fading, replaced by something harder. Something more like despair.
"Uncle Alexander may be my beloved uncle, but he is also the Emperor. No emperor can tolerate any challenge to his authority. Not even from his designated heir. The moment you wrote to him, my fate was sealed. There is no path back."
Helena stared at him.
She stared at this boy—this stranger wearing her son's face—and searched desperately for some sign of the child she remembered. The child who had wept against her shoulder when his father died. The child who had looked at her with trust absolute and unshakeable, who had believed that his mother could protect him from anything.
That child was gone.
In his place stood a young man who had just tried to put a knife through her heart.
"And I," she said slowly, "was the obstacle that needed to be removed. So that you could stage a full coup to usurp your uncle's throne?"
"Do not speak as if you were not planning the same." Constantine's jaw tightened. "You are merely using Uncle Alexander. When he dies, I become the heir, but without my own support base, you would be the de facto ruler. But you forgot to account for one thing in your grand plan, my dearest mother." His voice twisted with irony. "Uncle Alexander could also produce an heir of his own someday. And if that happens, I become the nail that sticks out, the threat that must be removed so that the new heir can consolidate power. Even if Uncle Alexander has no intention of killing me, his heir will. And you will be considered a threat too and killed too. So rather than waiting for that inevitability to befall me, I might as well gamble. After all, there is nothing to lose."
"And Gregorios was the one who suggested this to you?"
The question fell between them like an executioner's blade.
Constantine's face went white. "I—that is not—"
"So you have decided to become a kinslayer? First your mother, then your uncle?"
"I call it survival."
The word burst from him like a confession torn free by torture. His eyes—his father's eyes, so like the man she had loved—blazed with something between desperation and defiance.
"Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I enjoyed planning to—" He couldn't finish the sentence. His hands were shaking. "I never wanted to be the heir in the first place. Yet Uncle Alexander designated me simply because he refused to be a normal man and do his duties!"
"So you have decided to risk it all because of some remote possibility?"
"It is not as remote as you might think, Mother! All it takes is one woman, one night of drunkenness."
"Constantine, you truly do not know your uncle. He is far more devout and disciplined than you think." Helena's voice was much softer now.
"But it is all too late now. The moment you informed Uncle Alexander, my fate was sealed. I have crossed the point of no return. Mother, you should not have done it. You left me with no choice. I am sorry. I am truly sorry." Constantine spoke with a new sense of determination.
His hand moved.
Helena saw it—saw him snatch the heavy bronze candleholder from the altar with a motion born of desperation rather than training. Saw him swing it toward her head with all the strength of a young man who had just gambled everything and lost.
She sidestepped easily.
The candleholder whistled past her ear, close enough to stir her hair.
With a few quick steps, she closed the distance between them before Constantine even had time to react. Her arm wrapped around his throat from behind—not crushing, but pressing firmly against the sides of his neck where the great vessels ran close to the surface. Constantine's hands clawed at her forearm, but his struggles grew sluggish almost immediately. Within seconds, his eyes fluttered closed and his body went limp in her arms.
She lowered him gently to the chapel floor.
The chapel doors burst open.
Four Imperial Guards rushed in, drawn by the sounds of struggle, their hands on sword hilts and their faces set in masks of professional readiness. But they stopped—all four of them stopped—when they saw what awaited them.
The Regent of the Gillyrian Empire, kneeling on the floor.
The Crown Prince lying on the chapel floor.
A knife glinting in the candlelight. A bronze candleholder rolling slowly to a stop against the altar steps.
"Your Highness—" The lead guard's voice emerged strangled. His hand hovered over his sword, trembling with indecision. "We heard a commotion—and—"
He couldn't finish. None of them could. They stood frozen in the doorway, caught between duty and terror, between dedication to their current duties and fear of their future emperor.
Helena saw it. Saw the calculation behind their hesitation.
If they acted against Constantine now and he someday took the throne, they would be the first to die. If they failed to act and Helena demanded their obedience, they would be executed for dereliction. There was no safe path. No correct answer. Only the desperate hope that someone else would make the decision for them.
Cowards, she thought, with a grief that transcended mere disappointment. When the moment demanded courage, my guards respond with trepidation.
She raised her head.
And whistled.
Three sharp notes, rising then falling, a melody that had no place in a chapel but that every member of the imperial household knew instinctively never to speak of. It was not a Gillyrian signal. It predated the Empire by centuries—a borrowed tradition from the courts of the east.
The response was immediate.
Four figures materialized from the darkness behind the altar—from the hidden passage that only three people in the Empire knew existed. They wore no livery, bore no insignia, showed no faces behind masks of black silk that covered everything except their eyes. They moved with the absolute silence of those who had spent lifetimes learning to be invisible.
The Imperial Guards stumbled backward, hands fumbling for weapons they suddenly realized would be useless.
"The Prince is to be escorted to the eastern tower," Helena said, her voice steady once more. A regent's voice. An empress's voice. "He is to be confined to his chambers under constant watch. No visitors. No correspondence. No communication of any kind with the outside world."
She rose from the ground after handing over Constantine.
"No word of tonight's events is to leave this chapel. Anyone who speaks of what occurred here will be executed, along with those who received the news from them and those who spread it further. This I decree as Regent of the Empire."
The Imperial Guards—the ordinary guards, the ones whose loyalty had wavered when loyalty mattered most—stood frozen as the masked figures swept past them with Constantine's limp form between them. One of the guards opened his mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to ask a question.
Helena's gaze found his.
He closed his mouth.
"You will forget everything you have witnessed tonight." Her voice carried the weight of absolute authority—and absolute exhaustion. "You will return to your posts. You will speak of nothing. You will remember nothing. Am I understood?"
"Yes, Your Highness," they chorused, and fled.
The chapel door closed behind them with the finality of a tomb sealing shut.
Helena stood alone in the candlelight.
The silence pressed against her like a physical weight, broken only by the soft hiss of flames consuming wax. She should move. Should retrieve the knife and the candleholder and remove all evidence of what had occurred.
She did none of these things.
Instead, she walked to the altar on legs that had begun to tremble. She gripped the ancient stone with hands that had forgotten how to be steady. She stared at the icon of the Universal Spirit.
And she shattered.
The sound that emerged from Helena's throat was not a scream. It was not a cry. It was something far more terrible—a keening wail that seemed to rise from the deepest part of her soul, a sound of grief so profound that it transcended mere tears. It was the sound of a woman who had just lost everything that mattered.
She slid to her knees before the altar, and she wept.
She wept for the boy she had raised—the child she had loved with a ferocity that frightened her, the son she had protected and guided and believed in despite every sign that he was becoming something she could not recognize. She wept for his foolishness, his arrogance, the breathtaking incompetence of his betrayal. He had planned to kill her without bothering to conduct even the most basic research. He had gambled his future—his life—his soul—on a mere hint of potential danger.
Where did I fail you, my son? What poison did I allow to seep into your heart while I was busy protecting you from the world?
She wept for her husband, who had died securing the border of the Empire, whose bloodline would now end in disgrace. He had trusted Helena to protect their son, to shape him into a worthy man in service of the Empire he had dedicated his life to serving. And she had failed. She had failed them both.
Forgive me, my love. I tried to be enough for both of us. I tried so desperately to shape him into the man you would have been proud to call son.
She wept for her brother, fighting and bleeding before the walls of Podem, believing that his sacrifices served a purpose greater than himself. Alexander had given up Irene, had given up love, had given up any hope of personal happiness—all for the Empire. All for the future prosperity of an Empire her own son had almost plunged into chaos. All for a dynasty that Helena's own son had just brought into crisis through his own foolishness.
How shall I tell him? What words exist for such a confession?
She wept for Irene, who had buried herself in a convent rather than divide Alexander's heart from his duty. Irene, who had loved and never stopped loving, whose longing for Alexander still burned visibly in her eyes each time Helena visited.
We sacrificed everything. Love. Happiness. The simple joys that common folk take for granted. And for what? For an Empire my own son sought to tear asunder?
The wailing rose and fell in waves, echoing off the chapel's ancient stones until it seemed that the very walls were grieving with her. Helena pressed her forehead against the cold altar, feeling the chill seep into her bones, and she let herself mourn.
She mourned the future that would never be. The grandchildren she would never hold. The peaceful succession she would never witness. Constantine could not rule now—not after this. Even if she concealed his crime, even if she somehow rehabilitated him over years of careful management, the boy she had raised was gone. In his place was a stranger who had looked at his mother and seen only an obstacle to be eliminated.
The House of Leonikos will fall, she thought, and the words carved themselves into her heart like a funeral inscription. A century of glory and sacrifice. Generations of blood and vision. All of it brought to ruin—not by foreign armies, not by plague or famine, but by my oversight.
She did not know how long she knelt there. Long enough for the candles to burn low. Long enough for her tears to run dry and leave only a hollow emptiness behind.
When she finally raised her head, her eyes were red and swollen, but her face had gone terribly still.
"Mother," she whispered to the empty chapel. "You were right."
The words tasted like ashes on her tongue.
She thought of Empress Theodora—her mother, the woman who had dominated her childhood. Empress Theodora, whose clear disdain for their bookish, idealistic father—Emperor Leo—and whose ruthless ideology had repulsed both Helena and Alexander since childhood. Theodora, who had tried relentlessly to drill into them her view that order and prosperity were not built on mercy and ideals, but rather on blood and iron. To be a good ruler, one must not hesitate to kill.
"Remember," her mother had once said, "blood and iron build the foundation upon which ideals and mercy may invite prosperity."
Helena had dismissed those words as the bitterness of an old woman who had never known true affection. She had pitied Theodora, even as she feared her. She and her brother had vowed to be different. Gentler. More merciful.
And mercy nearly killed me tonight.
She rose slowly, her joints aching from the cold stone floor. Her eyes fell upon a particular shadow in the corner of the chapel—a shadow that was slightly too dark, slightly too precisely shaped. She walked toward it with the measured steps of a woman approaching her own execution.
Her hand found the hidden catch. Pressed. Twisted.
The panel swung open, revealing a narrow alcove barely wide enough to hold what it contained: a sword.
Not a ceremonial blade. Not a decorative piece meant for display. A weapon—short, straight, wickedly sharp, designed for close quarters and sudden violence. It had been Theodora's gift to them both upon Alexander's ascension to the throne.
"Keep this close," Theodora had said, her eyes hard as flint. "With power comes danger. The only person who can protect you anytime, anywhere, is yourself."
Helena drew the blade from its sheath.
Candlelight caught the edge and shattered into a thousand golden sparks. The sword was perfectly balanced, perfectly maintained—Helena had oiled it every month for almost twenty years, never truly believing she would need it, never quite able to convince herself to stop.
She held it before her, watching the light dance along its length, and spoke words she had once despised to the emptiness of the chapel.
"Prosperity is the fruit of suffering, and order the child of ruthlessness. Those who rule with mercy invite the blade; those who rule with love die upon it." The ancient private motto of the House of Leonikos—the words that Theodora had lived by and that Alexander had spent his entire reign trying to disprove.
Her reflection stared back at her from the polished steel. A woman with red-rimmed eyes and a face carved from grief. A woman who had just lost her son, her future, and—if not careful—the very Empire that her family had spent generations trying to restore to its former glory.
A woman who finally understood what her mother had tried to teach her.
Forgive me, Mother, she thought. I understand now what you tried to teach me. I understand why you were so ruthless. You were not cruel. You just did all the necessary dirty work to secure the prosperity that we now live in. Had I only shown you more warmth when you yet lived.
She sheathed the sword.
Then she straightened her spine, smoothed her robes, and walked toward the chapel door. There was work to be done. Messages to send. Conspiracies to unravel. An Empire to be salvaged.
It's time for the Empire to take a thorough bath. Even if it is a bath of blood.
Part 2
The preparations had taken far longer than any of them anticipated.
What should have been a simple matter of delegating command had transformed into an elaborate ceremony of farewells, blessings, and enough inspirational speeches to fill a monastery's worth of scrolls. The Vakerian soldiers had lined the courtyard in solemn ranks, their faces illuminated by torchlight as General Bisera addressed them. The steppe riders had been even more theatrical—Saralta's warriors had performed an ancient blessing ritual involving mare's milk, sacred herbs, and a great deal of chanting that had lasted nearly two hours.
"They believe we journey to the Realm of the Sky Spirits," Saralta had whispered to James during the ceremony, her eyes bright with amusement.
The Universal Spirit believers among the Vakerian ranks held a different interpretation—they saw this as a pilgrimage to a plane that existed somewhere between the mortal world and the divine realms. Either way, the gravity of the moment had transformed a simple reconnaissance trip into something approaching religious significance.
By the time all duties had been properly delegated, all farewells spoken, and all blessings received, the winter sun had long since given up the sky to the darkness of the night. It was well past midnight when the three of them finally stood alone in the war room, exhaustion etched into their faces but anticipation humming beneath their skin.
"Are you ready?" James asked, though the question was largely rhetorical.
Saralta bounced on the balls of her feet like a child promised a sweet. "I have been ready since you first mentioned your world of wonders. If I must wait another moment, I may expire from curiosity."
Bisera's response was more measured, but James caught the slight upturn at the corner of her lips. "Let us proceed before the Princess decides to expedite matters by physically shaking you in an attempt to initiate the process."
"I would never," Saralta protested. "I would ask very politely first."
James closed his eyes and reached for that familiar connection—the warm presence that existed somewhere between prayer and conversation. Seraphina, we're ready.
Finally came the melodious response, tinged with affectionate exasperation. I was beginning to think your medieval friends intended to bless you until the siege resolved itself. Very well—hold hands, close your eyes, and try not to scream. It upsets the neighbors.
Golden light erupted around them.
The sensation was like falling upward through honey—disorienting but not unpleasant, a momentary dissolution of everything solid followed by an equally sudden reconstitution. James felt the familiar shift in air pressure, the subtle change in ambient sound, the particular quality of stillness that belonged only to his world.
He opened his eyes to his living room.
And immediately heard Saralta's sharp intake of breath.
"By every spirit that watches over the eternal sky..."
The steppe princess stood frozen mid-step, her dark eyes blown wide as she slowly turned in place. Her gaze travelled upward—past the cream-colored sofas with their carved wooden frames, past the mahogany side tables and crystal vases, past the floor-to-ceiling windows with their champagne-hued drapes—until it finally settled on the chandelier.
The massive crystal fixture caught the ambient light and shattered it into a thousand rainbow fragments that danced across the walls and ceiling like captured aurora. Saralta's mouth fell open.
"The light," she breathed. "It throws colors. How is the air doing that?"
"It's called refraction," James began, but Saralta wasn't listening. She had already moved on to the next wonder—the polished marble floors that reflected her image like still water, the intricate crown molding that traced patterns across the soaring ceiling, the sheer volume of empty space contained within four walls.
"James." Saralta's voice had gone strange. Almost reverent. "I knew you possessed wealth. Bisera spoke of your divine wagon and your healing miracles and your endless conjured supplies. But this..."
She gestured expansively at the room around them—at the double-height ceiling that rose like a private cathedral, at the windows whose size pushed the very boundary of what she thought was possible, at the pristine surfaces that showed not a single speck of dust or trace of soot.
"This is a throne room," she declared. "A throne room designed for lounging. My father's palace has grand halls for ceremony and audience, but this—" She laughed, the sound bright with disbelief. "This is court-scale architecture repurposed for a single man's comfort!"
She spun to face James, and her expression shifted from wonder to something far more mischievous.
"I knew it," she announced triumphantly. "I knew you were wealthy beyond our wildest imaginings. Bisera tried to explain, but words cannot capture—" She gestured again at the chandelier, which continued to throw its prismatic light across her astonished face. "James, on the steppes, a man with wealth such as yours would have..."
She paused, clearly searching for the appropriate phrasing.
"...a considerable household. Many companions to share his good fortune. Secondary wives, favored concubines, perhaps a few informal arrangements with daughters of allied clans." Her grin turned positively wicked. "Tell me, Great Mage—how many women await your return in this palace of wonders? Should Bisera prepare herself for introductions?"
"Saralta!"
Bisera's face had flushed a magnificent shade of crimson. Her expression clearly indicated an internal struggle over whether she should clarify or let James clarify that he alone lived here.
"What?" Saralta's innocent expression fooled absolutely no one. "I am merely inquiring about local customs. It would be terribly awkward if some silk-clad concubine too eager to greet her lord's return emerged from behind those magnificent curtains and Bisera reflexively pulled a sword on her—"
"There are no concubines!" James interjected hastily, moving to Bisera's side and taking her hand. "No secondary wives, no informal arrangements, no silk-clad anyone. In my world, most people marry only one person. I live here alone."
Bisera smiled. "I know, James. You told me before."
"Yes—so again, there is no one else. You are my one and only."
"How disappointing," Saralta sighed dramatically. "I was hoping maybe… the local custom allows secondary wives."
"Wait, what?" Bisera sputtered.
But Saralta had already lost interest in teasing, her attention captured by something far more pressing.
"James." Her voice had dropped to barely above a whisper. "The lights in that crystal mountain above us. They are not flames."
She was staring at the chandelier again, but this time her expression held something different—a pure, almost childlike curiosity that stripped away her usual playful armor.
"There is no smoke," she continued slowly. "No flicker. No heat that I can feel from here. The brightness is... steady. Constant. Like captured daylight, but contained within glass flowers." She turned to him, and for a moment she looked very young. "How is this possible? What magic sustains such illumination without fire?"
"It's called electricity," James said gently. "A kind of... invisible force that flows through wires hidden in the walls. It powers the lights, and many other things besides."
"Invisible force," Saralta repeated, tasting the words. "Like mana, but tamed? Domesticated for household use?"
"Something like that."
She nodded slowly, filing this information away, then resumed her systematic examination of the room. Her footgear clicked against the marble for a few steps before she noticed and promptly removed her footgear out of respect. She circled the space, running her fingers along the carved furniture, peering at her reflection in the polished surfaces, craning her neck to study the ceiling's ornate details.
"The craftsmanship," she murmured. "Every edge is perfect. Every surface smooth as ice. Even my father's finest artisans could not achieve such precision." She stopped before one of the towering windows, staring out at the darkness beyond. "And this glass—it is enormous. Flawless. A single pane taller than most houses. In my world, such a piece would be worth a king's ransom."
She turned back to James, and now there was calculation in her gaze alongside the wonder.
"This dwelling must require an army of servants to maintain. The floors alone—" She gestured at the gleaming marble. "Who cleans the countless glass surfaces? Who dusts that magnificent crystal mountain?" A pause. "Surely you do not accomplish all this with your magic? Even magic must have limits."
James opened his mouth to explain modern cleaning services and part-time housekeepers, but before he could speak—
The phone rang.
The sound shattered the contemplative silence like a war horn—a sharp, electronic trill that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Saralta's sword was in her hand before the second ring, her body dropping into a combat stance with fluid grace. Beside her, Bisera had drawn her own blade, both women stepping instinctively in front of James to shield him from whatever invisible threat had announced itself.
"What manner of beast makes such a cry?" Saralta demanded, her eyes scanning the room for enemies. "Or are we being ambushed?"
"It's fine!" James said quickly, raising his hands in a calming gesture. "It's just the phone—a device for speaking with people across great distances. Someone is trying to contact me. It's not dangerous."
Both women relaxed and sheathed their weapons.
"A speaking device," Bisera repeated slowly. "Like the crying boxes merchants use in the market squares, but for private conversation?"
"Something like that. It should stop in a moment when it goes to—"
Click.
"Hi, you've reached James. Leave a message."
His own recorded voice echoed through the room, and Saralta nearly dropped her sword in shock.
"That was you," she hissed. "But you are standing here. How can you speak from the wall while also—"
Beep.
"James? Hi, it's Alina."
The voice that flowed from the answering machine was honey and smoke—not deliberately seductive, but possessing a natural quality that seemed to caress each syllable. It was the kind of voice that made male listeners lean closer without realizing they had moved.
"I know it's been a while, and I'm sorry for calling out of the blue like this. I'm going to be passing through Bortinto next week—I've got a connecting flight on my way back from a business trip in the States, and I thought... well, I wondered if you might have time for dinner? It's been so long since we caught up properly, and I've been thinking about you lately. About us, actually. Some things have changed on my end, and I thought maybe we could talk..."
A pause. A soft, almost wistful laugh.
"Anyway, call me back when you get this. I'd really love to see you, James. I've missed... well. Your exceptional stamina. Talk soon."
Click.
Silence descended upon the living room like a funeral shroud.
Saralta glanced at Bisera. Neither had understood a single word—the language of James's world was utterly foreign to their ears, its sounds and rhythms bearing no resemblance to any tongue spoken in Balkania or across the steppes. But some things transcended the barriers of language.
The voice had been unmistakably feminine. Unmistakably beautiful. Each syllable had flowed like warm honey, effortlessly sensual in a way that seemed as natural as breathing. And threaded throughout that incomprehensible stream of foreign words, one sound had repeated itself with unmistakable clarity:
James.
His name, spoken like a caress. Like a treasured memory. Like something owned.
Saralta's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline, her earlier wonder at the magical speaking-wall temporarily forgotten. "James," she said slowly, drawing out his name in deliberate imitation of that silken voice. "I may not speak your tongue, but I recognize that tone. That was not the voice of a merchant inquiring about trade goods."
She glanced at Bisera with what might have been teasing intent—but her expression faltered when she saw her friend's face.
Bisera had gone very still. Not the coiled stillness of a warrior preparing to strike, but something else entirely. Something fragile.
"What did she say?" Bisera's voice came out smaller than she intended. "James... please. What did she say?"
The "please" seemed to strike James harder than any demand could have. His face cycled from pale to red and back again.
"It's not—she's just an old..." He ran a hand through his hair, that familiar gesture of discomfort. "It was nothing important. Really. An old acquaintance who's passing through the area. She wanted to know if I'd have dinner with her."
Bisera nodded slowly, but her hand had drifted to her sword hilt—not to threaten, but to grip. To hold onto something solid while the ground seemed to shift beneath her feet.
"There was more," she said quietly. It wasn't an accusation. Just a sad certainty. "I could hear it in her voice. The way she said your name. She spoke for a long time, James. And that laugh she made..."
Bisera trailed off, unable to articulate what that soft, intimate laugh had made her feel. How it had conjured images of a beautiful woman from James's world—a woman who understood his strange devices and spoke his language far better than she ever could.