Soon, the room was filled with soft recitations, quills scratching, and occasional laughter. Isabella became so engrossed in her own stanza that it took several minutes before she realized something was wrong.
Eerily wrong.
Ellie’s soft snickers and playful comments were gone.
Isabella froze. She turned once, twice, looking around the spacious ballroom for her sister, but she was nowhere to be found.
The ladies continued in peaceful oblivion as they discussed the dresses or put their full attention into the poems.
Isabella rose immediately, scanning the room again with growing panic when she didn’t find Ellie. She moved to LadyEvelyn, a lady two years younger than she, who was reading her poem intently, tapping slightly on her arm.
“Forgive my interruption, but have you seen my little sister?”
Lady Evelyn shook her head and looked around, her lips pursed. “She was just here a moment ago. I believe I saw her from the corner of my eyes.”
Isabella sighed, catching the attention of Lady Kendrick.
“Are you all right, my dear Isabella?”
She shook her head. “I can’t seem to find my sister,” she said, and panicked gasps filled the room.
“But there’s no need to worry. I shall go in search of her myself. She couldn’t have gone far. You may all carry on with your lovely poetry,” she assured them.
Then she excused herself at once, her breath tightening as she hurried through the ballroom doors in search of her sister, her heart pounding wildly in her throat.
The afternoon had settled into the quiet lull that followed a long ride, the kind that left Cassian’s muscles loose beneath his coat and his breath still faintly clouded from the cool air.
He handed his horse to a stable hand and made his way toward the rear of his home, intending only to pick up a few instruments before retreating to his workshop.
Yet as he crossed the gravel path behind the house, a sound pierced the stillness. It was sharp, high, and echoing from somewhere near the overgrown section of the gardens toward the abandoned greenhouse his father once used. A structure that now stood half-forgotten, shrouded in vines and neglect.
Cassian froze at the sound, then he began moving.
He cut across the lawn, boots sliding on patches of fallen leaves, his cloak whipping behind him as he sprinted toward the broken greenhouse door. The glass panels rattled in the wind, some cracked, some missing entirely.
A small form huddled within, trembling as Cassian ducked inside.
Trapped behind a fallen strip of rotted wood and old iron, her tiny hands pressed against her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks, was a little girl. She looked no older than ten. Her curls clung to her damp cheeks, and her entire body shook with fright.
Cassian knelt at once, lifting the debris with a single heave of his arm and tossing it aside. The old metal practically crumbled along with the rotten wood as it hit an old stack of pots that shattered on impact.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice sharper than intended only because his pulse had yet to slow.
The girl didn’t answer. Her lips trembled, her breath hitching in shallow gasps. Tears clung to her lashes, spilling freely.
“Little miss,” he tried again, softer this time, lowering himself to eye level, “how did you get here? What is your name?” His face fell into a soft smile that was rarely seen by anyone in the past few years of his life.
He hated how helpless she looked and how quickly his heart tightened at her sobs. He had thought that he had done away with his softer side long ago, yet it seemed as if he had been wrong. A few remnants still remained.
He extended a hand but halted just inches from her arm, unwilling to startle her further.
“You must tell me if something hurts. Does your ankle—” His fingers hovered lightly near the hem of her stocking. “Does it hurt when I do this?” He applied the slightest amount of pressure to her ankle with the pads of his fingers.
The girl flinched, just slightly, and gave a tiny, trembling nod.
“Very well. It does not seem broken. Only sprained,” Cassian softened his voice further, almost whispering.
He would have said more, but footsteps pounded in the distance.
