A flash of color in a grayscale world.
My world.
I slip away from the chatter and step outside, needing space to breathe. The cold bites, but it’s the kind of cold thatreminds you you’re alive. Snow falls in slow spirals, the sky bruised purple with the coming night.
Mikhail—still wearing his long coat, refusing to admit he’s turning gray at the temples—stands in the courtyard with a half-empty bottle of brandy. He claps me on the shoulder, heavier than necessary.
“This change—it’s good,” he says. “Strange, but good.”
Strange.He has no idea how deep that word cuts.
He lifts it when he sees me.
“To a future not written in blood.”
His voice cracks on the last word, but I don’t mention it. Standing under the veranda, I watch flakes land on my gloves. I used to think snow meant silence, but tonight it feels like an ending written gently, finally.
Harper appears beside me without sound, as she always does when my thoughts grow too sharp.
“You okay?” she asks. “Mikhail, Sera wants you inside. You better put that bottle down, old man.”
The banter between him and Harper is a fresh change too. I didn’t think he’d take bullshit from anyone, but Harper gets it out of him.
“I can still outdrink every single one of you here,” he mutters as he moves back inside.
“Not a challenge,” Harper mutters fondly.
“I don’t know,” I admit as we’re left alone. “For the first time, I don’t know what comes next.”
She exhales, a small cloud drifting toward the moonlight.
“Then we finally have something real.”
The words settle in me like warm stones.Something real.
She threads her hand through mine, squeezing once.
“Walk with me?”
I nod. She walks beside me, her steps soft on the stone path. The rebuilt gardens stretch ahead, a quiet maze of winter branches and lamplight. The roses won’t bloom for months, but their stems already push through the frost as if the earth refuses to remember it was once soaked in fire.
The lamps glow amber against the white drifts, turning each breath into slow-moving gold. The snow crunches under our steps in a steady rhythm.
Harper’s fingers link with mine, the action as natural as breathing. For the nth time, emotion claws at my ribs, uncoordinated, feral. I survived everything except the part where the world asks me to stay still.
“Damian,” she says suddenly, her tone shifting. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
I tense before I can help it.
“What is it?”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I blink. “For what?”
“For trusting me with something that could break everything.”
I shake my head. “You’re the one who stitched everything back together. I’m just trying not to rip it apart again.”
