The dinner plates had been cleared.
The evening had deepened around them while they ate, the amber light shifting to something softer and darker as the hour moved past eight. They'd talked through the meal with the ease of people who had discovered, somewhat to their mutual surprise, that they actually enjoyed each other's company in the ordinary sense. Not just the charged, electric sense. Not just the supernatural compatibility sense.
Actually enjoyed it.
Raphael had told her about the Seraphim Court in the years before the coup when it had been something worth describing. Elena had told him about growing up in a satellite pack that had eventually merged with the Blackwood territory when she was seventeen. He'd asked questions that showed he was actually listening. She'd answered with the candor that he'd said he valued and found, testing it, that he genuinely did.
By the time the tray was set aside, something had shifted between them.
