The door opened with a reluctant creak—like a breath being held too long.
The sound echoed softly across the stone hallway, and Elara felt it in her bones.
She stepped inside.
The air was still but heavy, like a storm had just passed—or hadn't yet begun.
Light filtered through tall stained-glass windows, painting fractured colors on the floor, like memories too shattered to reassemble.
Dust floated slowly in the beams, drifting sideways as if avoiding her.
Shadows clung to the corners of the office.
The walls were lined with tall shelves—books arranged with unnerving precision, as if each volume remembered the last hand that touched it.
A single caged lantern hung near the ceiling, swaying faintly... even though the air didn't move.
At the heart of the room stood a broad desk, paper-strewn and strangely tidy at once.
And behind it, Alaric.
He didn't rise.
Didn't speak.
Just looked at her.
His gaze didn't pierce—it weighed.
It didn't accuse—it studied.
Still as frozen rain.
> Why does it feel like I've stepped into a storm no one else can hear?
Elara hovered just inside the doorway, fingers resting lightly against the carved wood frame.
It was the only thing that didn't seem to shift around her.
She hadn't even heard the door close behind her—but it had.
Finally, his voice came.
Quiet. Measured. Sharp.
> "You waited two days."
A statement. Not a question.
She blinked. "I wasn't sure you wanted me here," she said softly.
He didn't blink.
Then, after a long pause—
> "Did Aurelian bring you?"
His tone held no spike, no fire. But the stillness it carried was worse.
"I told him not to," she answered. "He thought it would help."
"He oversteps."
His voice thinned like the cold between two walls.
She felt it in her teeth.
> "He meant no harm," she said.
But something in her recoiled.
As if she'd touched an old wound without knowing it.
He rose. Slowly. Fluidly.
His coat whispered against the desk's edge as he moved.
No sudden gesture. No threat.
But a presence that stretched beyond his body—like his shadow had once filled this room… and never left.
> "This place follows order," he said. "I expect things to happen as planned."
And yet nothing here ever seems planned, she thought.
Even the light seemed lost in translation.
Up close, he didn't seem cruel.
Didn't seem like the statue of a husband she had glimpsed from afar.
He seemed tired.
Not with sleep.
With holding back something old.
"I thought I should meet my husband," she said. The words felt hollow and brave.
A flicker.
Maybe a smirk. Maybe not. It died on his lips before it could be named.
> "We are husband and wife only in name."
Sharp. Deliberate. Like a blade not meant to kill—but to warn.
She nodded once, almost regal.
"Then allow me to learn your name. Beyond the title."
Silence.
His eyes drifted. Not down—not to the ground.
To her hands.
Then back to her eyes.
> She doesn't tremble. Good. But why does she seem so… misplaced and yet inevitable?
He turned away.
> "That will be all."
The words rang like a dismissal.
But Elara didn't move.
She looked at the back of him—the sharp line of his shoulders, the tension that refused to relax.
You're afraid too, aren't you?
The thought came without permission.
Without malice.
She stepped backward slowly, the faint echo of her heel against the stone floor the only farewell.
Behind her, the desk groaned faintly.
Not from use—
From how hard he gripped its edge.
As if his fingers were trying not to reach—
Not for her,
But for something already half-lost.
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See you in the shadows…
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