Isabella's POV
The silence was the worst part. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of before, a comfortable lull between our verbal sparring. This was a heavy, loaded silence, thick with everything that had happened in the forest and everything that hadn't happened since. It stretched between us like a rubber band pulled to its snapping point.
But he didn’t trust me anymore. I could feel it. The small, hard-won truce we’d built over months of banter and shared glances was gone, shattered by my betrayal. The doors to the garden were now subtly locked from the outside. The staff, while still kind, watched me with a new, cautious vigilance. The freedom I’d taken for granted had been rescinded, not by a shouted decree, but by a silent, impenetrable wall.
And the confusing, maddening part was that
