Lyra broke, then — threw herself toward Rhys, weeping, reaching for him.
“It was a mistake, it only happened a few times—”
Odette, quietly, turned her tablet around.
On it was a text archive, the message dates plainly visible at the top.
“The messages go back eight months,” she said.
Rhys closed his eyes, and Odette watched a decade settle onto him in the space of a breath.
Dorian took a step toward his brother, reaching out to touch his shoulder, saying his name — and Rhys hit him.
Once.
It was not a brawl and Odette would not remember it as one; it was a single blow from a man who had just lost his brother, his wife, and his family in the span of a slideshow, and it put Dorian on the floor amid the wreckage of a dessert table, and then it was over.
Guests moved in to hold Rhys back, but he was not lunging for more.