The name landed like a stone in still water, and Lucavion watched the rings spread.
Before the Rotunda, Isolde had no reason to look at Elowyn Caerlin twice. A minor baroness among a hundred minor names, standing well outside any road Isolde walked. He had put her on that road himself. Crossing the floor before Gervase reached her had spared Elara one immediate pressure, and it had also lit her up before every noble with a taste for gossip, including the Lorian students who would inevitably carry the story back to Isolde.
That was the trouble with the novel. It could tell him what would happen if he left things alone. It could not tell him who would look up when he moved.
'Did I put her in Isolde's path?'
The question sank in cold and stayed there.
He did not have time for it. Beyond the folded screens, Clubs Day rolled on with its bells and vendors and cheerful, oblivious noise, and in front of him Isolde waited, patient as a tide.
