Ididn’t move when Aunt Mabel said his name.
For a second—just a second—I thought I had misheard her. That the rush of blood in my ears had distorted the moment. But she hadn’t stuttered. She hadn’t hesitated.
“Cassian.”
She’d said it with recognition.
What the hell?
The air in the foyer felt different after that. Like something old and buried had just exhaled.
Cassian didn’t touch me. He didn’t step in front of me or subtly claim ground the way he sometimes did when he sensed tension. He simply stood at my shoulder, present but still, allowing the moment to belong to me.
That told me everything.
He already knew this wasn’t random.
Aunt Mabel stepped back from the door, her cardigan hanging loosely around her small frame, her silver hair pulled into the same low twist she’d worn since I was a child. “You’d better come in,” she said gently. “It’s cold.”
We stepped inside.
Her house smelled the way it always had—lavender sachets tucked into corners, lemon oil on wood, something warm and faintly sweet lingering from the oven. The familiarity pressed against me in a way that felt almost disorienting. I hadn’t been here in years, but nothing had changed. The same pale yellow walls. The same oak sideboard near the dining room. The same rug in the hallway with the faint threadbare patch near the stairs.
Stability.
Containment.
Cassian removed his coat without prompting, folding it neatly over his arm before draping it over the back of a chair. The movement was quiet, controlled. He did not introduce himself. He did not offer explanation.
He waited.
“Tea?” Aunt Mabel asked, as though we were here for nothing more dramatic than a Sunday visit.
“Yes,” I said automatically, my voice sounding steady even though my pulse had not quite recovered from the sound of his name on her lips.
Cassian inclined his head once. “Thank you.”
We followed her into the kitchen, and something about that simple act—walking into a room that had held so many versions of me over the years—made my chest tighten.
I had studied for exams at this table. I had cried here at sixteen when a boy from school had humiliated me in front of my friends. I had listened to my mother argue softly on the phone in the hallway while Aunt Mabel pretended not to hear.
This house had always been where things were said plainly.
If they were said at all.
Aunt Mabel set the kettle on the stove and turned toward us, her gaze moving from me to Cassian and back again. It wasn’t suspicion in her expression. It wasn’t approval either.
It was assessment.
“Sit,” she said.
We did.
Cassian chose the chair beside mine instead of across from me, his thigh brushing lightly against my own. The contact was firm enough to be felt, subtle enough not to dominate the space. It grounded me in a way that felt almost unfair. I wasn’t facing this alone.
But my thoughts were spiraling, anyway.
My aunt had said his name without hesitation. And I couldn’t begin to imagine how that recognition existed. Cassian’s world—built on distance and precision—did not overlap with this kitchen. With Saratoga seasons and lavender wreaths and chipped tile floors. There was no logical bridge between them.
