The hairs along the bodyguard's arms stood on end as a sudden chill ran through him. He couldn't speak. Every word he might have said died in his throat the moment he looked back to where the loud noble should have been.
The man who had been behind him now stood at the front of the line. That alone wasn't strange.
What was unsettling was his expression.
There was no confusion, no surprise—no hint that anything unusual had happened at all. He looked just like everyone else around him, swept up in the same impatient frenzy of spectators waiting to enter the arena.
It was as though he alone had witnessed the man's disappearance and something deep within him whispered that if he drew attention to it, he might be sent to the same place the other man had vanished to.
Swallowing hard, he forced his racing heart to calm. Then, with stiff, mechanical movements, he turned back to meet Aden's piercing blue eyes and gave a shallow half-bow.
