Callum’s name.
He stands there for a long moment, unable to move.
This is not impulse.
This is intention.
His hand shakes slightly as he picks up the letter.He doesn’t sit.He doesn’t brace himself.He just opens it and reads.
Once.
Twice.
Each word lands with devastating clarity.
If I stayed, I would disappear.
Callum presses his thumb into the paper, breathing hard.The room feels suddenly too small, the air too thin.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
She loved him enough to leave.
The realization cuts deeper than anger ever could.
His gaze drops to the documents beneath the letter, legal language stark and unyielding.The castle.The land.Everything.
Given to him.
Left behind.
“No,” he whispers, the word useless against ink and signature.He wants her, not the castle.
He sinks onto the edge of the bed, the weight of the letter pressing into his chest like a physical thing.The castle creaks softly around him, the sound winding through stone and beam until it settles in his bones.
It feels wrong now.
Too big.Too quiet.
Like a body without a pulse.
He thinks of her laugh in the music room.The way she teased him when he missed a chord.The look in her eyes when she trusted him, really trusted him, to hold something fragile without breaking it.
He’d wanted to be worthy of that.
Instead, he hesitated.
The castle exhales, a low sound rising through the walls, ancient and mournful.Callum feels it echo through him, grief layered on grief, absence piled atop inheritance.
For the first time, the place does not feel like shelter.
It feels like a monument.
He rises slowly and crosses to the window.Fog lingers over the land, damp and gray, the road leading away already empty.
She’s gone.
Not in anger.
