For a second, everything just hit pause. The air turned heavy, suffocating, the kind of stillness that made your ears feel weird. It was like the garden itself had stopped breathing, the frost-bitten air turning into a solid wall between them.
He knows. Or, no, he thinks he knows. For a split second, Cherion felt his pulse hammering against his ribs, fast and loud enough it felt like Philia should be able to hear it. But then the "Reader" part of his brain kicked in. That cynical, over-read side of him that had seen every plot twist, every imposter reveal, every dramatic "you're not who you say you are" moment ever written.
If there was one thing Cherion knew about people like Philia, especially the so-called "Saintly" type, it was that they ran entirely on their own sense of importance. Their intuition wasn't just a guess. To them, it was basically divine truth. And if you wanted to deal with that? You had to treat their big "revelations" like they were just saying nonsense.
