Mara POV
The manor feels different when we return.
Same marble floors. Same soaring ceilings. Same expensive furniture arranged with cold precision. But something has shifted in the air between these walls, like the house itself remembers those few days when we pretended to be real.
I unpack in my room. Hang dresses back in the closet. Return jewelry to velvet-lined boxes. Put everything back where it belongs.
Except Lucien's jacket.
I stare at it folded on my bed. Still carrying the faint scent of ocean and rain and him. I should return it. Walk down the hall, knock on his door, hand it over with some polite excuse about accidentally packing it.
Instead, I hang it in the back of my closet where I won't have to look at it every day.
Where I won't have to think about why I can't let
