Midnight has a name
320 Words
Mara should have been asleep.
Instead she was standing at her back door at midnight, staring at a man who had absolutely no business being in her grandmother's garden — seated in the old iron chair like he owned it, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, examining her climbing roses with the calm, unhurried appreciation of someone who had all the time in the world.
Because he probably did.
The moonlight hit him differently than it hit everything else. Too sharp. Too silver. Like the light itself was afraid to touch him carelessly.
Mara's hand tightened on the door frame. Every survival instinct Ashenveil had drilled into her over seventeen years was screaming the same word repeatedly — run. She didn't run. Her feet had stopped working somewhere between seeing him and realizing he already knew she was there.
"You've been keeping the wolf," he said softly, without turning. His voice moved through the night air like a blade through silk — quiet, precise, and capable of causing damage you wouldn't notice until later.
"My name is Soren Vael." He turned slowly, deliberately, like someone who had never once needed to rush. "I won't apologize for entering your garden." His amber eyes found hers and held them with unsettling steadiness. "I will, however, apologize for the roses."
Mara looked. Two of them were wilting before her eyes — petals curling inward, colour draining, dying in real time simply from his proximity.
Her mouth went dry.
"What are you?" she whispered.
The smile that crossed his face was the most dangerous thing she had ever seen.
"You already know," he said. "You've always known. This town has a way of teaching children what lives in the dark." He tilted his head slightly. "The real question, Mara Voss, is why something from both sides of that darkness is suddenly so very interested in you."
The roses continued dying quietly between them.
- Writer
