The silence of the hotel room weighed oddly on Lennox. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, casting orange-tinted shadows across the floor, but the brightness brought no calm. The walls felt too sterile, the bed was made too tightly, and though he'd washed the dust of the journey off his body with a cool shower, the tension still stirred under his skin. Madrid was out there. The city of the tournament. The reason he'd been training, focusing, straining, staying silent for weeks—and now, finally, it was just a street away. And yet, for the first time, he had a moment to feel what he'd somehow managed to avoid until now: that everything he'd done had been leading somewhere. To something real.
As he left the room, the cool air of the corridor seemed to exhale around him. His steps
