MADELINE
I sat across from my father in the lounge, watching steam curl up from the rim of my coffee cup. The liquid inside had gone lukewarm five minutes ago but I kept my hands wrapped around the porcelain anyway. It gave me something to hold onto while we made small talk about nothing that mattered. The weather. The nice roses he noticed from the window in the garden. Whether the elders of the circle were being fashionably late because they were all in cohorts with Alpha Aldric.
My father looked relaxed. Since Aldric's arrest, He seemed like a different person, especially since the trial was going to commence and end today. There was a lightness in his posture that I had not seen in years, like someone had finally cut the strings that had been holding him down. He leaned back in his chair with his own cup balanced on the armrest and talked about mundane things.
