Kaida
As soon as I stepped into the apartment, I found Dahlia lounging on the couch, a rare lightness to her expression that I hadn’t seen in days. She looked up at me with a soft smile, and for a moment, the weight of the past few hours seemed to fade. I swallowed back the overwhelming urge to tell her everything—about Nikolai, about what he’d said, about how close we were to getting swept up in a war that wasn’t ours to fight. But seeing her smile, seeing that brief spark of peace in her eyes, made me hesitate.
“How was dinner with Bastian?” Dahlia asked casually, her voice carrying none of the tension I’d expected.
I froze for a second, carefully considering my words. I couldn’t tell her the truth—not tonight. “It went fine,” I replied, hoping my voice didn’t give me away. “We… talke
