Leone's lips parted, but no answer came immediately. She seemed almost taken aback by the open hostility in Aveline's eyes.
Then she noticed something else.
Her heart seemed to stop.
Aveline looked eerily like Leveret.
Those delicate features. That porcelain skin. The same bright, searching eyes, though Aveline's were blue where Leveret's had been softer. Even the confidence in her posture, the effortless grace with which she carried herself, stirred something painfully familiar in Leone.
Leveret's grandchild.
The realization sent a strange tremor through her.
But this was not Leveret.
This girl was barely a third of her age. She had no reason to look at Leone with such hostility, no reason to carry that same proud little tilt of the chin that had once driven her mad.
Leveret had been dead for decades.
Leone swallowed and forced herself to remember that.
