“Oh, fox.” A soft, indulgent sigh. “You intrude where you’re not welcome.”
Then its attention slid to Penelope like a gloved hand tracing the shape of her name.
“And you… pretty little Penelope Sinclair.” The voice savored every syllable, Ton-sweet and venom-laced.
Penelope straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “Why are you here?” she asked, her tone betraying a hint of ice.
The voice softened, intimate in the most unsettling way. “To see if you remembered me.”
A ripple of cold swept across the garden—lanterns flickering, frost blooming deeper on the hedges.
“And to see,” the entity murmured, “if you still step out of bounds when you think no one is looking.”
The garden held its breath.
And the shadow waited.
Chapter 27
Penelope did not look away from the shadow.
The moonlight shimmered along her cheekbone; the lantern behind her flared, as if holding its breath for her response.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, measured—the manner of a woman offering a correction, not an argument. “Remember you?” A slight tilt of her head. “Why would I?”
The entity stilled.
Penelope continued, utterly unruffled. “I only remember those who mattered,” she said, each word clean as a blade’s edge.
“Unfortunate for you.”
The frost on the hedge nearest the shadow crackled in an instant—not from heat, not from cold, but from affront. Mingxi’s eyes flicked to her. Not in warning, not in reprimand, but in recognition. She had struck first.
The entity laughed. Not loudly, not wildly, but softly. Delighted. Like a courtier amused by an unexpected twist at supper.
“Ah,” it purred. “There she is.” The shadow softened, blurred, reshaped itself, as though leaning closer without stepping forward. “The little Sinclair who thought defiance was protection.”
Penelope’s expression didn’t change. Her posture didn’t shift.
“I didn’t think it,” she replied. “I learned it.”
The entity hummed, pleased. “Learned from whom?” A whisper like a fingertip tracing frost. “Your pretty sister? Your charming parents?”
Mingxi’s magic tightened, a ripple beneath the surface, a shimmer in the wards.
Penelope didn’t blink. “No,” she said. “I learned it as one learns to walk, a simple truth.”
Silence poured into the garden, heavy, electric, sharp. The lantern flames trembled. The frost pulsed.
The entity’s voice changed shape, clearly no longer amused but intrigued. Deeply.
“You will remember me,” it murmured, almost tender. “Soon.”
The garden seemed to tilt, shadows lengthening like fingers.
“Very soon.”
The frost lattice at Penelope’s feet shimmered like a living thing, tendrils of cold tracing patterns the eye wasn’t meant to follow.
