Lucian's POV
The borderlands were unusually still tonight.
No howls, no rustling, just a kind of dead quiet that presses on the ears until it feels like silence itself is alive and listening. The moon hung heavy above us, fat and silver, cutting through the fog that licked the edges of Hilda's clearing. Her crooked little cottage crouched in the middle of it, made of dark timber and bones bleached white by time.
Evelyn stood beside me, arms folded tight against her chest. She looked like she wanted to vanish back into the woods, smart instinct, but far too late.
And Hilda…. well, Hilda was exactly as I remembered her.
She was wearing the body of an old man, tall, wiry, with shoulders that sloped and eyes too sharp to belong to anyone mortal. Her expression, though, that cold amused smirk, that was all her.
I stepped forward. "Enough of your games, Hilda." My voice carried through the still air "We didn't come here to dance around your theatrics. This is serious."
