[Emma's POV]
The house was too quiet.
Not the quiet silence that came with sleep or loneliness, but the kind that hummed underneath the skin—unnatural, oppressive, as though the house's own breath had gagged in its throat. Shadows lay long across the marble floors, and the comforting glimmer of candlelight that tagged along behind shut doors was absent. Every creak of the wooden timbers seemed to echo, each tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway thundered. The quietness was forced, as though someone had silenced the world on purpose.
Jaxon had seen it first. This house, he had known it too well—it in its moods, its groans, the way it sucked in its breath when it was alive and its shrinking when something was wrong. A cold knot curled tight in his stomach as he padded up the stairs
