False Alarm.

When Victoria pushed forward enough and outside of the pillars that were previously masking her vision, her eyes nearly gouged out their sockets when she saw him. For heaven's sake, he never looked so gorgeous and haughty in all his charms. What nonsense was everyone spitting then about him having lost himself? Was this just a conspiracy to get her to him?

Victoria held back her surprise in her eyes. She succeeded in doing so for a minute and then she could not any longer. She spoke up.

''You—You are perfectly okay? I mean, there is nothing physically wrong with you?!''

Only after she'd said this did it dawn on her how stupidly she'd obviously sounded to him for shouting like that.

Briceus held on to his breath for a split second and when he decided to let it go, the words that came forth the parting of his lips was: ''Why in the world should anything be physically or mentally wrong with me, Elizabeth?''