"It was raining that day..."
Aeron's voice was hollow. Distant. Like he wasn't even here anymore—just a ghost retracing footsteps through a memory he wished he could forget.
I squinted at him, something sharp twisting in my chest.
Damn.
The young man in front of me—bruised, hardened, all jagged edges and quiet fury—suddenly looked so small. Like the boy he'd just been describing was still trapped inside him, screaming.
Aeron continued, his fingers twitching as if grasping for something that wasn't there.
"I was coming back from the city."
A flicker of warmth. Just for a second.
"I'd bought her favorite desserts. A souvenir too—some stupid hairpin with little flowers on it." His thumb rubbed his palm absently. "She always liked those useless pretty things."
Then—
Silence.
A wrong kind of silence.
The air around us thickened. Grew heavy. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as something cold and razor-edged seeped into the space between us—
Killing intent.
