The corridor behind her felt narrower with every step. Every glance from a passing servant. Every draft sneaking beneath closed doors whispered of something unseen.
Elara needed air.
She moved through the halls like a sleepwalker, guided less by memory and more by instinct. Past paintings with hollow, watchful eyes. Past doors sealed with time. Until she reached a narrow passage she was certain hadn't been there before.
At its end: a tall iron-framed door.
Beyond it—what must have once been a garden.
The air hit her first. Damp with earth, tinged with the scent of withering roses and something older, something half-forgotten. Overhead, a dome of mottled glass arched toward the night, veined with ivy and streaked with the ghost of rain.
It should have been dead.
Yet someone had trimmed the overgrowth. Watered the roots. Lit the hanging lanterns that glowed faintly along the cracked stone path. It wasn't beautiful. But it was tended.
Cared for.
She stepped in.
The silence was unlike the hush of the corridors—it was full, watchful, alive. Vines curled like sleeping serpents. Pale flowers drooped over moss-covered stones. The cold met her skin with a gentleness almost reverent.
She found a bench beneath a gnarled tree and sat, folding her hands in her lap.
The air felt heavier here, and yet... she could breathe.
Then—
A voice behind her.
"You found the only place in this house that breathes."
She turned.
He stood just beyond the lantern's glow.
Alaric.
Not in black velvet and gold trim, but in simple, shadowed clothes. His coat loose. His hair damp from mist. His presence quiet, grounded. He didn't look like a duke here.
He looked like someone the world had forgotten to grieve.
"I didn't mean to intrude," she said softly.
"You didn't." His voice was low. "This place welcomes silence."
He stepped toward the tree, his fingers brushing its bark.
"No one comes here anymore. Not since the garden keeper passed. But someone… learned from him."
She tilted her head slightly. "You?"
"No," he said after a pause, something unreadable flickering through his expression. "Someone else. Someone more stubborn."
He offered nothing more.
The silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable, but thick with unsaid things.
Elara looked up. The moon pressed faint silver against the glass, casting light like scars across his face. She didn't know what she expected—an apology? A proper introduction? A reason?
But he just stood there.
So she spoke, more to herself than to him.
"This house feels like a memory. One that doesn't belong to me."
"It doesn't," he answered. "It belongs to ghosts who no longer remember their names."
She looked at him then, more sharply.
But he wasn't watching her. His gaze stayed with the leaves, unmoving.
A beat.
"You shouldn't wander alone at night," he said at last. "The halls shift when no one's watching."
"So do dreams," she murmured. "But I wake from those."
For the first time, he looked directly at her.
"Some dreams don't want you to."
Then, without another word, he turned and disappeared into the dark path behind the lanterns.
Elara stayed long after he'd gone, unsure whether he'd just given her a warning…
Or whispered a truth she wasn't yet ready to understand.
⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋱
See you in the shadows…
⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋱