SERAPHINA’S POV
Kieran didn’t speak on the way back to our room.
I tried to pretend it was nothing.
The meeting had been dense, layered with many moving pieces, many implications that would take time to unravel.
Silence after something like that wasn’t unusual. If anything, it was expected.
But this…
This wasn’t that.
It wasn’t the quiet of someone thinking. It was the quiet of someone holding something back.
I felt it in the space between us as we walked the length of the corridor, in the absence of the small, instinctive touches that had long since become second nature between us.
Normally, even in silence, there was a kind of awareness—his presence brushing against mine, steady and grounding.
Now…there was distance.
And I knew where it had started.
Not in the strategy room.
Not when Alois had mentioned royalty or witch factions or tracking curses or even Lucian.
No—it had started earlier.
Back in the Origins Archives.
