The morning after the kiss, Bastián became a stranger.
Not a confused one, not a guilty one, not even an angry one. He was worse than all of that because he gave me nothing at all. He moved through the estate with the same control he used in a fight, and when I entered a room, he looked through me like I was part of the furniture someone had chosen poorly.
It was humiliating but it was also intentional.
I felt it in the way he spoke to the others and skipped me over, in the way his gaze passed my face without pausing, in the way he gave orders in front of me as if I were not there, then waited for me to follow like a useful shadow.
The estate had changed with him.
The air itself felt colder, the wolves in the hall lowered their voices when I walked by, not because they feared me, but
