I hesitate for longer than I should. Then I sink into the armchair, careful to keep my posture tight, controlled, like that alone can keep the atmosphere from shifting. It doesn’t.
The silence stretches between us—not awkward, not cold, just filled with the weight of things unsaid. Her gaze flicks to my chest briefly, then back up to my face.
“You scratch yourself when you sleep.”
It’s not a question. It’s a fact stated gently, without judgment.
“I do,” I admit, the words bitter in my mouth.
“Because of dreams?”
“Because of what I am,” I say simply.
She doesn’t flinch, not even a little. “And what you are is… sick? Injured? Why fly me all the way out here only to not let me treat you? Why promise me all that cash?”
“Unexpected issue. You’ll still be paid, but-”
“You’re not a danger to me,” she says quickly.
I look at her sharply. “You don’t know that.”
“I know how I felt when you carried me in from the cold. I know how steady your heartbeat was. I know what fear feels like, and I didn’t feel it with you.”
That strikes something deep in my chest. A bruise I didn’t know I’d been guarding.
“I haven’t…” My voice catches for a second, then I clear my throat. “I haven’t had company like this in a long time.”
She tilts her head. “And is it so unbearable?”
“No,” I say, and the honesty surprises me. “It’s not.”
The fire crackles between us, casting long shadows across the worn carpet and weathered shelves. Her presence wraps around the room like warmth, not heat, not desire—though that simmers still—but comfort. Acceptance.
That night, I go to bed later than usual.
Sleep doesn’t come easily. And when it finally does, it drags me into a dream so vivid it feels like memory.
She’s there, tangled in my sheets, her body warm and bare, her skin flushed with something more than cold. She murmurs my name like a secret, her mouth parting beneath mine, her limbs loose and trusting. I move above her, hands trailing down her sides, memorizing every inch with reverence I haven’t felt in centuries.
And just as I begin to lose myself in that imagined heat, her eyes shift.
From softness to fear.
And I wake, breathless, drenched in sweat, the sheets wound around me like bindings I deserve.
Shame burns hotter than desire now.
Because even in sleep, I frighten the one thing I crave.
The one thing I may never deserve to touch.
9
TESSA
The morning settles softly over Crane Manor, blanketing everything in a kind of hushed reverence that makes the old wooden beams seem more like the ribs of some sleeping creature than architecture. There’s mist rising off the snow in languid curls, drifting lazily through the trees like smoke from a forgotten fire, and I sit tucked into my usual corner of the library, the same oversized knit quilt draped over my legs, a half-warm mug of cinnamon apple tea in my hands.
The quiet here isn't the absence of noise. It’s deeper than that—denser. Like a pause between thoughts. Like the moment just before a confession slips from someone's lips. It took me a few days to realize that silence in this house doesn’t mean stillness. There are layers to it. Shifting moods beneath the wood and stone. Breaths held and secrets tucked into every hallway.
