The Dragon's Devotion will be out on September 4th (yay!), so I thought I'd start doing some more snippets from it to lead up to the release date. In this snippet, we have the first time Bastien sees Corentin. They're both guests at a wedding, and Bastien is people-watching (because he annoyed his sister and she's ignoring him for the moment!).
As Ligeia continued her conversation with Mathis, Bastien let his gaze wander over those he didn’t recognize. He assumed some were Tristan’s friends and family—a few he picked out as potential siblings because of the strong resemblance—but Tristan came from a merchant family, so Bastien wouldn’t have met any of them previously. Some of the other faces Bastien didn’t recognize were probably Etan’s friends from the university. Etan was a scholar at heart and still remained devoted to his studies and work there, lecturing at the university when he could.
He let his gaze pass over the crowd, not really focusing on anyone in particular. Until he was arrested by a pair of intense violet eyes. Bastien’s breath caught in his throat, and for a moment he couldn’t look away.