The train wheels clicked rhythmically against the tracks as the landscape shifted from the rolling Austrian valleys back toward the sharp, jagged peaks of Switzerland. Inside the first-class carriage, the air was uncomfortably still, smelling of expensive leather and the stale scent of travel. Kai stared out the window, his reflection superimposed over the blurred Alpine scenery. Beside him, Elea sat with a book open in her lap, but she had not turned a page in over thirty minutes. The holiday in Vienna had been intended as an escape, a way to breathe through the suffocating tension of their lives in Zurich, but it had transformed into the very catalyst that was tearing their domestic sanctuary apart.
"We will be home within the hour," Kai said, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth he us
