I stop. Because that door was closed this morning. I know that. I reviewed the report.
Conditionally available.That category again.
I turn, slow and deliberate, and step toward it. She’s inside, standing near the window. Not looking out, watching the reflection in the glass. Watching the corridor.
Watching me.
She doesn’t turn immediately. She lets the moment exist long enough to confirm it. Then she shifts, just slightly, and faces me. No surprise. No apology. Just awareness.
“You’re outside your rooms,” I say.
“You’re outside yours,” she replies.
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s built from the same discipline that defines everything else about her.
I step just inside the doorway, enough to establish presence without closing distance.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
She considers that. Not the answer, but how much of it to give.
“Patterns,” she says finally.
“Have you found any?”
“Yes.”
“Which ones?”
Her gaze holds mine, steady, unflinching. “The ones that change.”
Then she turns. Walks past me. Close enough that I register details I shouldn’t be paying attention to—the steadiness of her movement, the lack of hesitation, the way she doesn’t alter her pace or path to accommodate my proximity. She simply continues on.
I remain in the doorway after she’s gone, knowing that she’s getting under my skin far more than she should.
And I don’t know how long I can keep my distance.
Chapter 9
Testing Limits
POV:Evie
The house changes after I refuse to leave it. In small ways: timing, access, the angle of a door left open half an inch longer than it should be. The absence of a guard who used to stand exactly where you expected him. The system breathes differently.
So do I.
It’s been three days since Rory left without me. Three days since I chose to stay. Three days since the offer stopped being theoretical and became something I actively declined.
Nothing has been said about it, which means everything has adjusted around it.
I test the edges carefully at first. Library. Garden. West corridor. The service door that opens every third day. Not on a schedule I can name, but on one I can feel forming under the surface.
Patterns exist. I just haven’t earned all of them yet. But as I stand in the hallway in the late hours of the night with mynightdress skimming my knees, there’s one place I really want to go, even if I don’t know how it’ll be received.
