Later that night, alone in the east wing bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for my phone to vibrate.
It didn’t.
No message. No check-in. No quiet reassurance that had once arrived automatically.
I told myself it meant nothing.
But it was the absence that did the damage — not betrayal yet, but displacement.
I wasn’t losing him.
I was discovering he had never truly been mine.
---
I woke to raised voices drifting faintly through the corridor.
Not loud. Controlled. The way arguments sound when people are trying not to admit they’re having one.
“She doesn’t know,” Ethan said.
“That’s unfair,” Lydia replied softly.
“It’s practical.”
There was a pause.
“Practical for whom?” Lydia asked.
“For the system,” he answered.
“For you,” she corrected.
I stood frozen in the doorway, pulse loud in my ears.
“She’s manipulating this situation,” Ethan continued. “Julian is leverage. The division she took — she didn’t choose it randomly. She’s positioning herself.”
“And you think that makes her dangerous?”
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation in his answer.
I stepped into view.
“When exactly did you decide that about me?”
They both turned.
Ethan’s face went pale. Lydia’s composure slipped, just barely.