Lydia's Point Of View
The man's fingers gripped the edges of my phone so hard I thought the screen might actually shatter into a million jagged glass shards. He wasn't just looking at the photo; he was consuming it, devouring every pixel as though it held the answer to some unspoken question.
The air in the study, which had been heavy with threat moments ago, suddenly felt as if it had been sucked out by a vacuum. I could barely breathe.
His face had gone pale beneath his olive complexion, and a muscle twitched at his jaw, a rhythmic pulse that betrayed the storm brewing beneath his controlled exterior. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost, or a goddess, or perhaps the ghost of a goddess he'd once known. The transformation was so complete that for a moment, I forgot to be afraid.
