Rowan's POV
Something had changed, and I couldn't decide whether I was grateful for it or unsettled by it.
It started small enough that I nearly convinced myself I'd imagined it. Mira lingering a beat too long in doorways before entering a room, studying me the way a person studies a locked door they've decided to eventually pick open. Conversations that used to move quickly, full of her sharp comebacks and my equally sharp deflections, now carried pauses that hadn't existed before, gaps where she seemed to be weighing something before deciding whether to voice it.
I told myself it was nothing.
By the third day, I stopped believing that.
She caught me at breakfast, watching me over the rim of her cup with an expression I hadn't seen from her before, careful and assessing, nothing like
