The second recess hit harder than the first.
The words "short recess" left the judge's mouth and Amara's body decided that meant "you may now fully fall apart."
"All rise," the bailiff called.
Everyone stood; she stood with them, one more puppet on strings.
The judge disappeared through the door behind the bench. People exhaled. The low courtroom murmur returned—lawyers conferring, reporters whispering, benches creaking.
"You should get some air," Patel murmured.
She realized her fingers were clenched so tight around the edge of the table that her knuckles were white.
"I'm fine," she lied.
"You're vibrating," he said. "Go walk. Stay inside the building, don't talk to anyone with a press badge, and be back in… five minutes. Ten, max. I'll text you before she comes back."
She hesitated, then nodded. Sitting here, with Lucian's presence like a static field at her peripheral vision, felt like trying to breathe inside a tightening fist.
She stepped away from the table, knees still wobbly. As she turned, Leah caught her eye from the second row. Leah raised both eyebrows—You okay?—and when Amara gave a small, not-really shrug, mimed breathing: in, out, in, out.
Amara managed a crooked smile.
Then she slipped through the side door, past the bailiff, into the quieter vein of the courthouse.
The hallway outside 6B was moderately busy. A couple in suits argued quietly near a water fountain. A court clerk hustled past with a stack of files hugged to her chest. A man in handcuffs shuffled down the hall, flanked by two officers, eyes fixed on the floor.
The noise of Courtroom 6B's circus dimmed behind her. Different storms raged in other rooms.
She walked.
Her borrowed coat swished around her knees, Leah's perfume—vanilla and something floral—clinging to the fabric. It felt like armor made out of someone else's life.
At the far end of the corridor, a narrow sign pointed right: Restrooms, Stairwell, Exit. To the left, a short flight of stairs climbed to a mezzanine she hadn't noticed on the way in.
She went left.
The stairs emptied onto a quieter landing, a kind of architectural afterthought. No courtrooms here, just closed doors labeled "Storage" and "Records," and a long stretch of wall interrupted by a single high window.
The hum of fluorescent lights filled the space. The air tasted like dust and institutional paint.
Amara walked to the window, drawn as if someone had tugged a string.
It was taller than she was, set higher than necessary, as if meant for light, not for views. Still, if she tipped her head back and stood on the balls of her feet, she could see a slice of sky beyond the stone frame.
The city's glow washed out most stars, but the moon didn't care about the city.
It hung low, swollen, a bright white disc caught in a smear of cloud. It looked closer than usual, like someone had dragged it down with a hand and forgotten to push it back up.
"It's daytime for normal people," she whispered. "Why are you doing your full horror show now?"
It wasn't technically full—more like a day or two past. Close enough. The kind of moon her readers spammed her with in comments when she dropped a particularly feral chapter.
She pressed her fingertips lightly to the glass. It was cool, faintly vibrating with the building's hidden machinery.
Her reflection stared back faintly—pale face, dark hair escaping its tie, the oversized coat. The courtroom had left a faint flush on her cheeks that hadn't yet decided whether it was embarrassment or anger.
She exhaled, fogging a small circle on the glass. Drew a tiny wolf's head with her fingertip before wiping it away, guilty, like she'd just graffitied a sacred building.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She jumped.
A text from Leah.
Leah:Where did you vanish??
Leah:Judge still in back. Adrien is pretending to be relaxed, Lucian is pretending to be a statue. 10/10 performance, would not recommend.
Leah:Breathe.
Amara smiled despite herself, thumbs hovering.
Amara:Moon break. Don't tell anyone I'm cheating with astronomy.
Three dots appeared.
Leah:If the moon offers you legal advice, TAKE IT. She's less biased than everyone in that room.
Leah:Also if you become a werewolf I expect co-author credit.
She slipped the phone back into her pocket, the smile fading as quickly as it had come.
The last twenty minutes replayed in ragged flashes.
Her own voice saying "dreams" into the microphone. The courtroom's little intake of breath. Adrien lining up possibilities like knives. Then Lucian—ring sliding off, scar revealed, the world narrowing to that pale crescent of skin she'd already inked months ago.
How did you know?
She squeezed her eyes shut for a second.
"I didn't," she told the empty hallway. "I drew you wrong and accidentally got you right. That's all."
A soft creak answered her.
She opened her eyes.
The sound had come from behind, she thought. Somewhere down the hall.
She turned her head slowly, coat rustling. The corridors on either side of the landing stretched away—one back toward the main staircase, one deeper into the quieter parts of the building. Up here, most of the doors were closed. The cheap overhead lights flickered slightly at one end, buzzing like tired bees.
No one was there.
Her skin prickled anyway.
"Stress," she muttered. "That's all. Adrenaline and bad courthouse coffee."
She turned back toward the window.
The moon had shifted a fraction, or the clouds had. Its light spilled more directly onto the glass now, brightening her reflection. The faint shadow of her head and Leah's too-big coat were outlined on the dull stone floor behind her.
Another sound slithered through the air—so low she almost missed it under the hum of electricity.
A vibration more than a noise, running along the walls, through the soles of her shoes.
Like a distant… growl.
Not loud. Not movie-monster. Just a low, sustained rumble, like a motor idling in the bones of the building.
Amara froze.
Her heart tripped over itself, then slammed into her ribs.
She held her breath, listening.
The air-conditioning unit hidden in the ceiling wheezed softly. Somewhere below, a door banged. Voices murmured in faint, blurred tones. None of those were it.
The rumble came again, a fraction louder. It rolled through the wall under her fingertips, humming against her skin. For a heartbeat it sounded disturbingly alive, not mechanical.
Her imagination filled in teeth.
She snatched her hand back from the glass.
"Okay," she told herself, too loudly. Her voice bounced back off the corridor walls, thinner. "Okay no. We are not doing this. This is not one of your pages. This is not that kind of building."
The rumble faded.
The silence that replaced it felt… watching.
She slowly turned her head, following some primitive instinct that said don't turn your back on the thing you can't see.
At the far end of the longer corridor, where the light from a flickering fixture met the deeper shadow, a shape stood.
Tall. Dark. Still.
A man-shaped silhouette against the pale rectangle of another window—double height, further down the hall. The light haloed its outline, blurring details.
But she knew that outline.
Broad shoulders. Clean lines of a suit. The particular, precise tilt of a head that looked like it had never in its life slouched for anyone.
Her pulse lurched.
"Mr. Hale?" she blurted, irrationally hopeful that it was just Adrien tracking her down to warn her the judge was back.
The shape didn't move.
"Lucian?" she tried, quieter.
At that distance, with backlighting, she couldn't see a face. Just shadow over light.
The corridor between them seemed longer than it had a second ago. Every speck of dust in the air felt outlined.
She thought of the question in the courtroom. How did you know? The way his eyes had pinned her, not just as a legal opponent but as something stranger. As a puzzle.
Her throat tightened. "If this is about the scar, I didn't—"
The growl slid through the walls a third time.
Closer.
It thrummed under her ribs, low and steady, as if the building itself were exhaling.
The lights hummed in sympathy. For a second, the fluorescent bulbs flickered; the corridor dipped in and out of shadow like a blink.
When they steadied, the silhouette at the far end looked… wrong.
Slightly broader. The angles of shoulders not as crisp. Something about the head—tilted a fraction too low, as if the neck had lengthened or shortened in a way human spines didn't.
Her body flared with goosebumps.
She blinked hard, eyes watering.
The next time the light flickered, she saw a different outline where the man-shape had been.
Not taller. Not shorter.
Just… looser around the edges.
Like a shadow with fur.
Her heart slammed.
She blinked again, harder, tears threatening. The overhead light buzzed angrily, stuttered, then returned to its steady hum.
The corridor was empty.
No silhouette. No man. No not-man.
Just a stretch of dull linoleum, closed doors, an EXIT sign glowing red in the distance.
Amara stood rooted to the spot, breath shallow.
Her brain tried to assemble a rational explanation.
Stress. Obviously. Two recesses' worth of adrenaline. Flickering lights making afterimages dance at the corner of her vision. The memory of her own panels overlaying reality like tracing paper.
She let out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a hiccup. "Great. Fantastic. Court-induced hallucinations. Love that for me."
Her phone buzzed again in her pocket, startling her.
She fumbled for it like a lifeline. A text from Patel this time.
Patel:Judge coming back in 3. Get to 6B. And avoid reporters in hall.
She glanced one last time down the corridor.
Just walls and doors and the faint scuff of janitor's wax.
Her gaze skated over the windows again. Outside, the slice of sky was a deeper blue now, almost purple. The moon, framed by courthouse stone, seemed to press closer still, bright and unblinking.
For a heartbeat—just one—she had the sharp, irrational sense of being seen from both sides.
From the courtroom, by cameras and eyes and a man who had turned his ring into a question.
And from above, by something colder and older that didn't care about injunctions or damages, only about cycles. About what rose and what changed when certain shapes of light hung in the sky.
She tore herself away from the window.
As she moved back toward the stairs, coat swishing, the building hummed around her. The fluorescent lights kept up their weary buzz. A door down the opposite corridor clicked quietly shut, as if someone had just stepped away from it.
She didn't look back to see who – or what – might have been standing there a moment before.
By the time she re-entered Courtroom 6B, her pulse had slowed enough to pass for normal. Her hair was slightly messier, her palms still damp. Leah spotted her, eyebrows jumping in a silent ??.
Amara slid back into her seat beside Patel.
"Feel better?" he murmured, eyes on the bench.
"Define 'better,'" she whispered back.
She didn't tell him about the moon, or the way the air had vibrated, or the shadow that had maybe been a trick of bad wiring and worse imagination.
She had enough trouble sounding sane when reality was already bending around lawsuits and scars she shouldn't know.
The bailiff called, "All rise," again.
As she stood, she felt the faintest echo of that low, impossible rumble at the edge of hearing, like the building's bones were clearing their throat.
She told herself it was just the old pipes.
And she didn't look at Lucian as the judge walked back in.
Because if she did, and saw anything in his face that matched the shadow in the corridor, she wasn't sure she'd be able to keep pretending this was just a normal, terrible human mess—and not the start of the kind of story she usually only dared to tell in ink.