"You were tense. You were waiting for detection. That's why I even noticed you at all. Because you were searching
—what exactly were you really doing out here?"
Elara didn't move.
Her body was still. Her breath measured. But her mind—
'That… makes sense, doesn't it?'
She hadn't planned those words. Hadn't meant to accuse him like that, hadn't meant to unravel a thread she hadn't known she was holding.
But now that it was out—spoken, alive in the space between them—she could feel it.
Sense.
'He really was hiding something.'
She hadn't meant to believe it. But now? It sat in her chest with uncomfortable weight, like a shard of truth she hadn't realized she already knew. As if her instincts—those half-buried ones honed in Stormhaven and sharpened through exile—had already been whispering it beneath her awareness.
The pressure. The silence. The precision of those flames.
The way he'd sensed her, from that far, through the woods, while supposedly "training."
