Here's me in my room, with my solitude.
The breeze curled through my balcony, cool fingers threading into my hair, sweeping it across my damp cheeks. I hadn't meant to cry, but tears had a way of slipping out when silence became too heavy to hold.
It had been hours since I last saw him. Hours, but each one stretched long enough to feel like a lifetime. My chest hurt with the thought, my ribs aching as if time itself was punishing me for counting.
I told him everything. I had opened my heart to him, clumsy and trembling, baring feelings I had never dared to give a voice to. And after that, after Seraphina's cold lecture that left me bruised inside, he was simply… gone. Not a word. Not a glance. Not even the sharp little smirk that used to anchor me in the chaos.
It was worse than anger. A silent treatment that gnawed at me, a cold shoulder I couldn't explain. I didn't know if I had said too much, or if my words had weighed him down, or if Seraphina's accusations had driven him further from me. All I knew was the emptiness.
I leaned against the railing, nails biting into the iron, forcing myself to look past the academy's towers glowing under moonlight. I wanted him in front of me. Right there. Even if he said nothing, even if he glared, even if he mocked me I would take it. Anything was better than this void.
But the corridors had been empty of him. The dining hall, too. Every place I thought he might be, he wasn't. It felt like searching for a star in daylight impossible, foolish. Yet my heart didn't care. It kept waiting, kept aching, as if he would appear at any moment and undo this distance with a single word.
I pressed my forehead against the cold railing and closed my eyes. "Where are you, Alaric?" I whispered into the night, my voice breaking.