Fens P.O.V
I watched Laine retreat to her room, the soft click of the door echoing faintly through the stillness of the estate. The firelight flickered across the walls, stretching shadows long and thin, almost alive, like reminders of truths I wasn’t ready to voice. Truths she couldn’t know. Not yet.
I ran a hand over my face and exhaled slowly. The cracks. The darkness at the edges of our world. The pull I felt toward her. All of it was dangerous—yet grounding in ways I couldn’t admit. She didn’t understand the weight she carried, didn’t even know the magnitude of what her existence had already shifted. And somehow, knowing she did not know made the tension worse.
I remembered the first time I sensed her potential—not the first time I saw her, but that tremor in the portal, the subtle
