Riven leaned against a cracked pillar, letting the shadows play across his features. “You ever notice,” he said slowly, voice low and deliberate, “how good it feels to have a place that belongs only to you? No eyes, no expectations. Just space to… exist without pretending.”
Alina traced the rim of a dust-covered table, watching him from the corner of her eyes. “It’s… different,” she admitted softly, the words almost foreign. “To be somewhere that doesn’t demand anything from you.”
“Different, yes,” he murmured, stepping closer, the faint scrape of his boots against stone sounding far louder than it should have. “Liberating, even. You can laugh, curse, breathe… or simply do nothing, and no one can judge you for it.”
She looked up at him, noting the way his dark eyes flickered with amusem
