The silence in the garden stretched, brittle and taut, as though even the air itself had drawn back to listen.
Lucian remained still a moment longer, the echo of his own words rolling faintly in his chest. Sunlight fractured through the hedges and leaves, falling over him in sharp, bright slants, too alive for the unease curling through his ribs. He should have returned inside, back to the safety of the hall, back where shadows could not drag him into their games.
But he did not move.
His gaze fixed on the corner where the figure had vanished, dark against the brightness of afternoon. It should have been nothing. His mind should have written it away as a trick of light, a ripple of his imagination stretched thin by too many nights of guarded silence and too many days of masks.
Yet he knew what he had seen.
The figure had been real. A shape distinct from the sway of branches. A presence heavy enough to leave his heart stuttering.
