“When will you all understand?” he hissed, stepping closer. “I don’t need your pity. I don’t need your concerned looks, your whispered conversations behind my back. I don’t need your fear.”
She reached for him; an instinct, a desperate attempt to comfort whatever was left of him. But he recoiled as if burned. In a sudden burst of violence, he smacked her hand away and slammed both fists onto the table. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, making her jolt.
“Don’t!” he roared.
Evelyne gasped, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. “Cillian, please… What can I do?”
A humorless chuckle left his lips, and he shook his head slowly. “I don’t need your help,” he spat. “I need to be respected.” He turned and began pacing, his fists clenched at his sides, his whole body tense with barely restrained anger. “She’s right, you know.”
Evelyne’s stomach lurched. “She? Who are you talking about?”
“The woman,” he murmured, almost to himself. “She sees the truth. You all see me as a burden.”
“No, Cillian,” Evelyne said quickly, standing now, desperate to reach him, to break whatever trance he was in. “We don’t.”
But the moment the words left her lips, he whirled on her, his face contorted with something inhuman. His lips curled back, exposing his teeth, and the darkness in his eyes deepened, endless, soulless.
“Liar,” he rasped.
Evelyne’s breath caught in her throat.
“Maybe…” She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice steady. “Maybe I should get a healer. You might need rest—”
A book flew across the room before she could finish, slamming into the bookshelf with a resounding crack.
“I NEED NO ONE!” he bellowed.
Then, he stormed out, leaving Evelyne rooted in place and shaking as tears streamed down her face. She had never felt fear like this before—not for herself, but for her brother’s soul.
***
Evelyne stirred in her sleep, a chill creeping up her spine. Her brows knit together as she shifted beneath the covers, her body instinctively curling inward against the sudden coolness. Her eyes fluttered open.
Something moved. A whisper of black at the edge of her vision.
The room was dark, but not in the way it should be. Shadows stretched unnaturally, pooling beneath the doorframe. A thin stream of something—was it mist?—seeped from the gap beneath her door, writhing like ink in water.
Pushing back the covers, she sat up, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the bite of cold against her bare feet. Was she dreaming? The house was utterly silent, yet something about the air feltwrong.
She wrapped her robe tightly around herself and moved toward the door. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the handle, hesitating. An unearthly iciness radiated from the wood, crawling into her bones. Slowly, she turned the knob.
The hallway stretched before her, the air heavy with the sense of an unseen presence watching. She inched forward, but hesitated at the staircase. One glance over the edge, and a sudden rush of fear gripped her.
Below, the foyer was veiled in swirling, inky mist. It slithered and pulsed, stretching toward the walls before retracting, shifting as if alive.What is that?
Her bare feet were silent as she rushed down the wooden steps, but the mist dissipated when she reached the bottom, as if it had never been there.
She stood frozen, skin prickling, the silence of the house pressing in around her. Had she imagined it? Was she sleepwalking? No… Something had been here. She was sure of it. And whatever it was, she couldn’t shake the eerie certainty that it hadtakensomething withit.
***
Alaric woke with a pounding head and a hollow ache in his chest. The morning light sliced through the heavy drapes of his chamber, too bright, too unforgiving. He groaned, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes as if that could push away the burden of the night before. But no amount of pressure could erase the image of Evelyne’s face—the devastation in her eyes when she realized the truth.
He hated himself.
The truth of their arranged engagement was never supposed to come out this way. Not like this. Not in front of her. And yet it had unraveled before his very eyes, slipping from his grasp like water through his fingers. When he’d told Evelyne he wanted to marry her, he’d meant it. Every damn word. She was his friend, the first woman who ever truly saw him, and for a fleeting moment, he had believed that what they had—the comfort, the understanding, the intimacy—was real. But now, it was gone. And he had ruined it.
He spent the morning slumped over in silence at the breakfast table, barely able to choke down his tea, his appetite soured by the stinging rebukes of his parents. His mother sighed deeply between sips of tea, her disappointment thick in the air. His father, on the other hand, was not as restrained.
