Cassian's breath stalled the instant her face tilted into the light.
It was impossible.
The last place in the realms he'd ever imagined seeing her was here, in the Demon's concubine hall, with the Fourth Demon Lord's hand claiming her arm as though she belonged there. With the status of his mate.
For a heartbeat, he almost convinced himself it was someone else, just a resemblance and nothing more, a trick of shadow and torchlight...but no, it was all real. The curve of her cheek, the unyielding grace in the line of her neck, the subtle tilt to her lips when she was hiding a thought…
It was her.
Princess Aurelia.
A name he hadn't let himself think of in years.
Once, when the world was still too big for him and his place in it too small, she'd been the only one who never made him feel the difference. She had carried a title like a crown and walked halls he could never step into, yet she'd never looked at him with that faint, polite distance nobles kept for those beneath them.
