The contract reviewed
Even after reading the contract three times—slowly, carefully, tracing every line with her eyes as if they were incantations—Emilia still could not understand the wording. The sentences felt like bricks stacked on top of one another: hard, chilly, and impossibly dense. They pressed against her skull until her temples throbbed with dull ache. She blinked, rubbed her forehead, and tried again, but the words behaved like smoke—present, overwhelming, yet impossible to catch.
The mansion around her felt unusually silent that afternoon. Not the peaceful kind of silence, but the heavy, watchful kind. As if the walls themselves were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for her.
The pages of the document were spread across the table like the wings
