The silence stretched, thick and humming. The two mages exchanged the briefest glance, subtle yet charged with unspoken calculations. Doubt flickered across the woman's expression, a minute shift in her otherwise steady features. The man, however, recovered first, though his grip on the table's edge had tightened.
"State secrets do travel far, don't they?" His voice was measured, but the slight rigidity in his tone betrayed him.
Arthur didn't miss the hesitation. Neither did Aleks.
Tashran. The way they carried themselves, the quiet rigidity in their posture, the ingrained habit of masking reactions, it was all too familiar.
No mercenary, no hired hand from another kingdom would have flinched at the name alone. These two weren't just from Tashran. They were tethered to something deep within its borders, something that made Aleks' name more than just a footnote in a distant history.
