Sera.
We made our way outside the estate a few hours later. The morning air was thin, brittle with cold, the kind that bit through fabric and lingered in your bones. I had bundled up in one of Adrik’s coats—oversized, thick, and worn like it belonged to another lifetime. Maybe it did.
We walked in silence through the estate grounds, past frost-dusted hedges and naked trees, until the land dipped into a small, stone-walled grove. The crunch of our footsteps on the frozen earth was the only sound until we reached a narrow, iron gate.
Adrik stopped there.
“This way,” he said, voice low. He pushed the gate open, it opened with a groan, and I followed him down the narrow path flanked by snow-covered rose bushes.
The grave was simple—Black marble monument, with a picture of a woman , and he
