The cold night air bit into my skin as I approached Marcus, who stood outside the village gates, his broad shoulders tense against the wind. His gaze was fixed on the distant horizon, eyes dark and unreadable, as if he was already lost in thought or preparing for what was to come. I could see the faint glow of his breath in the frigid air, a ghostly cloud that vanished almost immediately.
I moved quietly, my footsteps muffled by the grass in the ground, and stopped a few paces away. There was a heaviness to the silence between us, an unspoken weight that had grown since Callum took Chrissie. I had reached him just in time, arriving at the edge of the world where the night stretched endless and cold.
He finally turned, his expression hardening when he saw me. “You’re late,” he said, voice
