Alistair and I sat on the stone bench outside Baqanta Villa, beneath the skeletal silhouette of the lone tree that swayed in the evening breeze. The cold air hung with a silence that pressed down on our shoulders. It was the kind of quiet that followed tragedy—the kind you didn’t break unless you were ready for it to bleed.
We didn’t speak at first. The tension was thick and suffocating. I’d never seen Alistair like this—her shoulders hunched, eyes red-rimmed, her usual sharpness dulled into something painfully human. She looked like a part of her soul had died with Delilah.
Then finally… she spoke.
“She was always so good to me,” Alistair said, her voice barely a whisper. “Even when I was little. Delilah never ignored me. She wasn’t loud or demanding like the rest of us. She was… soft.
