//CLARA//
The first snow of the season descended like a judgment.
I stood on my terrace, watching the flakes dissolve against the stone railing, each one a brief, bright thing that vanished before it could accumulate. It felt a bit too metaphorical for my liking. My freedom had been just like that.
A few days of light, only to melt the moment it touched the reality of this house.
The cold had teeth. It bit through my woolen robe and the thin nightgown beneath, finding the spaces where I was most vulnerable. I'd been standing there for God knows how long. Long enough that my toes had gone numb inside my slippers, and the lantern's glow had begun to feel like a hallucination of warmth rather than the real thing.
Five days.
Casimir had locked me in this room for five days. The door opened twice a day for a silent servant to slide a tray in—someone who wasn't Hattie. He'd forbidden her from entering, stripping me of my only ally.
