The next four days settled into a pattern that Lira did not trust.
Soren did not seek her out again. He was present on Ravencrest territory, visible in the way that a large predator is visible when it decides to sit in the middle of a clearing and let everything else adjust around it, but he did not come to the kitchens. He did not appear in the service corridors. He did not find reasons to cross her path or ask her questions about her mother or call her ‘little wolf’ in that low unhurried voice that made the scar on her wrist do things she could not explain.
His absence should have been a relief, but it was not.
Instead it felt deliberate, like a held breath, like the space between a question and an answer that someone was taking their time to deliver. Lira caught herself scanning the
