Chapter 98
Varin’s POV
The halls of the estate were quieter than usual, but silence had never meant the absence of noise—only the careful concealment of it.
And the whispers still found me.
They slithered through the corridors, curling around corners, slipping beneath doors, never truly gone, only hushed. The walls carried them, the floors absorbed them, and the air itself felt thick with their presence.
Servants moved in clusters, their footsteps light, their conversations fragmented, but I caught enough. Their voices were laced with disbelief, edged with something close to awe, as if they couldn’t quite reconcile what had happened with what they had expected.
I wasn’t even searching for information, yet it reached me effortlessly—drifting toward me like a scent in the wind, slippin
