The air was too still that morning. Even the stone walls seemed to hold their breath.
Kian left his sister's chambers with the dull ache of sleeplessness still sitting behind his eyes. The corridor stretched ahead, washed in the pale light that filtered through narrow slits in the palace walls. Every few steps, he caught himself listening—half expecting to hear Isabella's sharp laugh echo down the hall, or that soft hum she made when she was thinking.
Nothing.
No chatter.
No footsteps.
No sound at all.
It was wrong.
He told himself he wouldn't go near her room. He wasn't ready for that—for her eyes, the questions, the unspoken why did you do it? that would live between them forever. He'd already failed her once. Better to stay away.
But the silence dragged at him like a hook.
He stopped outside her door. The faintest breath of air came from the crack beneath it—warm, uneven, alive. Someone was in there. His body tensed. Instinct, the part of him that never slept, stirred.
