The heavy doors of Calixto's study closed with a thud that seemed to swallow the lingering tension of the afternoon whole. Calixto didn't sit immediately. Instead, he paced to the window, his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the rolling hills that he had never quite learned to love. Behind him, the rustle of silk told him Yelena had claimed her usual armchair, and the click of a latch suggested Isella had snuck in behind them, finally dropping the mask of the petulant princess.
"Well," Yelena said, her voice cutting through the gloom like a precision blade. "That was certainly not the tea party I anticipated."
Calixto didn't turn. He was still thinking about the girl's eyes. Verona didn't have the fire of the Vernhardts, that loud, crackling arrogance he'd seen in her father, but she had something far more dangerous. She had the stillness of deep water.
