The banquet settled into a delicate balance after Elisa had unexpectedly accepted Leon's "deeply heartfelt" second offering. On the surface, the guests continued to clink glasses and laugh amid the music, but countless gazes still swept, deliberately or otherwise, over the young Hohenzollern lord who had retreated to a corner again, and the cool, composed Windsor heiress. Quiet whispers drifted between the champagne bubbles and the music, laden with all manner of unspoken speculation and amusement.
On the other side of the hall, in a relatively quiet lounge near the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, the atmosphere was entirely different. The air seemed frozen, carrying a scorching chill.
Eleanor Soros stood with her back to the lively dance floor, gripping a delicate lace handkerchief so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. Her fiery red curls trembled slightly against her shoulders, and suppressed fury burned in her emerald eyes as she stared at the heavy darkness outside, as if she could tear the night apart with her gaze. In the soft light around her, her flame-red mage's robe looked like a fire on the verge of exploding.
"Damn it... damn it! That good-for-nothing! That shameless idiot!" She practically spat the words through clenched teeth, her voice low and sharp with humiliation and resentment. "He actually... And that ice-faced Elisa..."
She spun around, chest heaving, and glared at her younger brother, Raymond Soros, who stood before her with an expression of helpless concern. "Did you see that?! Raymond! Did you see the disgusting look on Leon Hohenzollern's face just now?! And Elisa Windsor! She actually accepted it just like that?! Has her brain frozen solid?! She went along with that good-for-nothing's pathetic little act!"
Raymond Soros, a sixteen-year-old boy who already bore the Soros family's characteristic stern features, was a young knight who