Chapter 93: The Quiet Before Wanting
Eva had always been small for her age — not just in size, but in presence, too. Quiet. Watchful. A child with a strange and piercing stillness, the kind that made adults glance twice, unsure if they were looking at a five - year - old or something else entirely.
She moved through the world like a question or punctuation mark, like someone waiting for permission to take up space.
That winter, everything was pale. The days, the sky, even the light that filtered through her bedroom window — soft, silvery, and cold. It cast long, feathered shadows across her floor and turned the corners of her small world into places of thought.
Eva had never been one for toys. Her shelves weren't filled with games, but with books — old books, animal dolls, plushies, mostly poetry, leather - spined and far too complicated for most children her age. But she didn't read them for sense. She read them for sound. For the music of the words.
And she memorized them, line by line.
Because when she couldn't speak what she felt, she borrowed voices from pages.
Her mother once told her that some children are born old.
"You've always been that way," she'd said, with a laugh that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Like you're remembering something none of us ever lived."
Eva didn't understand what that meant. But she understood the feeling.
That sense of already knowing something. Of reaching for someone who hadn't arrived yet.
She was waiting, always waiting — for a voice, a touch, a presence that matched the ache in her chest.
So when Seraphina came, Eva didn't just notice. She recognized her.
Like an answer she had forgotten the question for.
*****
The first time she saw her, it was from the upper balcony of the west solarium — a quiet moment stolen between piano lessons and violin. Down below, beyond the wrought - iron balustrade and past the marble steps that swept into the Langford gardens, a girl sat on the low stone wall, back straight, ankles crossed, reading aloud to herself.
Sunlight gilded her auburn hair like flame caught in silk. A velvet ribbon, slightly crooked, trailed down her shoulder. Her fingers — ink-stained, impossibly delicate — flipped pages with reverence, though she seemed more interested in the rhythm of the words than their meaning.
She wasn't from here, not exactly. She belonged to the Langford legacy, that much was obvious — anyone raised in those halls carried a kind of polish money couldn't buy. But there was something else. A hush in her posture. An elegance not taught, but inherited. Bred.
They said her name was Seraphina. She was only seven, but already there were whispers — about lineage, about ambition, about the way she could command a room without raising her voice.
Eva watched from above, unnoticed. Hidden behind lace curtains and the weight of secrets. She wasn't meant to be seen — not yet. Not the way Seraphina was.
But Seraphina looked up anyway.
Their eyes met across the sun-drenched garden, and the air seemed to still.
"You're watching me," Seraphina said, not unkindly.
Eva stepped forward, caught. "You read out loud."
"I like the sound of it."
"What is it?"
"Not sure. The words feel familiar. Like something I knew in another life."
Eva blinked. "That's… strange."
Seraphina smiled. "Maybe. But you understand, don't you?"
And somehow, Eva did.
They weren't supposed to become close.
Between an heir born to shine and the one taught to hide.
Seraphina didn't talk down to her. Didn't laugh when Eva used words too big or ideas too strange.
And Eva… she followed Seraphina like the moon trails the tide. Not always right beside her, but always in orbit.
They read in silence. Walked the garden paths. Spoke in the kind of riddles only children and poets understood.
And at night, when her own place felt too large, too quiet, Eva would sneak down the hallway and curl up beside her Ina. Seraphina never said no. Never told her to go back to her own bed.
She'd lift the blanket wordlessly, and Eva would slide in — small and silent, her head tucked beneath Seraphina's chin like a promise.
Those nights were different. She dreamed of warmth. Of hands that didn't flinch. Of voices that didn't raise.
Of being held and not corrected.
Of being wanted, even if she didn't know what to call it.
*****
But the spell of closeness always ended at sunrise.
Seraphina would stretch. Rise. Return to her day, while Eva lingered — already missing her, already counting the hours until they'd be near again.
She didn't know what to do with the emptiness Seraphina left behind.
It wasn't pain. Not exactly.
It was… unshaped. Wordless. A kind of gravity pulling her chest inward.
Her mother noticed, of course. Parents always noticed the symptoms of attachment, even when they didn't understand the root.
"She's too obsessed," her mother whispered to Vivienne over breakfast. "She's five, Viv. She shouldn't be clinging like this."
"She's not just clinging," Vivienne had replied, stirring her tea slowly. "She's choosing. There's a difference."
"Children that age don't choose like that."
Vivienne arched an eyebrow. "Eva does."
It became a quiet tension in the house.
No one wanted to tear them apart. But no one quite knew what to do with them either.
Eva's bond with Seraphina wasn't tidy. It wasn't sweet in the way adults liked. It was too intense. Too solemn. Too… honest.
She didn't giggle when Seraphina entered the room. She looked at her like the sky had parted.
She didn't ask for toys. She asked for poems.
She didn't want more friends. She wanted more time.
Vivienne, despite her misgivings, watched with something like reverence.
She had always known Eva was different.
But watching her around Seraphina — watching the way her eyes lit up, how her posture changed, how she allowed herself to need something — it broke something open in Vivienne's chest, too.
Because Eva didn't need much. Never had.
She was too careful. Too self-contained.
But Seraphina made her reach.
And that… that mattered.
One evening, just after dinner, Eva sat cross-legged on the rug in her bedroom, thumbing the frayed edges of her poetry book. She was trying to translate a stanza from Latin, but her eyes kept wandering to the hallway.
Waiting. Hoping Seraphina might come in.
But she didn't. Not that night.
Her family had left early. Plans had changed again. Seraphina had been pulled away for the evening, and Eva hadn't been able to say goodbye.
A hollowness settled in her chest like dust.
She didn't cry.
But she didn't sleep either.
She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying the last thing Seraphina had said to her.
"Back soon, little moon."
Back soon.
Soon.
But what if she wasn't?
What if the words didn't hold?
What if Seraphina disappeared like other good things had in Eva's short but memory-laden life?
She turned the page. Read a line she didn't understand. Clutched the book to her chest like a heartbeat.
She hadn't learned how to be wanted. But she was beginning to understand the ache of wanting.
And that was the beginning of everything.
*****
The next morning, long before dawn, she slipped from bed.
Barefoot, book in hand, she padded to Aunt Vivienne's room and stood by the edge of the bed until her aunt stirred.
"I want to see Ina," she said.
Vivienne blinked at her.
"It's not even six—"
"Please."
A breath. A hesitation.
Then: "Alright."
Later, after the car pulled away, Vivienne stood in the foyer staring at the door Eva had just walked through.
She was still holding her phone in one hand.
Still wondering what, exactly, her niece was chasing.
And what might happen if she caught it.
That morning, Seraphina opened her arms without asking questions.
And Eva, wrapped in silk and breath and the scent of warmth, thought only one thing:
Don't let this end.
Not this time.
The house behind them was waking. Birds calling from tree to tree. Light spilling like gold across the garden path.
Eva, too young to name the shape of what she felt, rested her head against the girl she didn't know how to live without.
And Seraphina — no longer just a visitor, no longer just older — tightened her hold
and whispered against her hair,
"You found me again, little moon."