Did that just —
I don’t move for a full breath. Two. Then I drop my gaze to the handle. Did the door just unlock? On its own?
Jesus. This should freak me out. This should make me run in the opposite direction, but instead I wrap my fingers around it and turn.
Maybe I deserve to be kidnapped without an apparent reason, because I sure as hell as can do stupid shit sometimes.
The door gives way beneath my touch, and something inside me lurches—my heart suddenly a trapped bird throwing itself against my ribs.
The space is larger than I expect—wide and open, the air almost reverent in its stillness. Light spills across the floor in a muted wash of amber, like it’s been ushered inside. There’s no clutter. No furniture crowding the center. Just a long wooden bench built into the far wall, facing a single enormous window.
The view steals the rest of my breath.
Snow-peaked mountains layered in soft blue shadow, the sky above them stretched wide and burning—gold melting into rose, rose dissolving into indigo. It looks composed. As if the house was built around this exact angle, this exact quality of dying light.
I step inside without realizing I’ve moved. Entranced by the sight, I forget for a moment that I didn’t choose to be here.
The bench is at the perfect distance—close enough to feel suspended in the view, far enough to sit without pressing against the glass. I lower myself onto it slowly, the way you do with something you’re not sure you’re allowed to have.
The sun sinks lower. The light shifts. And only when the room dims enough for my eyes to adjust do I look up, forgetting how to breathe right.
The ceiling isn’t plain. It’s painted. One half autumn, with deep-amber leaves suspended mid-fall. Branches heavy with fading color—burnt orange, deep rust, muted gold. The sky above them dusky and soft, as if the air itself carries the scent of something ending.
The other half is spring. Branches pale and delicate, blossoms just beginning to open. Petals caught in a gentle upward drift, light and hopeful against a clean blue sky. They meet at the center without blending. Not competing. Just existing side by side, two seasons that should never share a room, sharing one.
My fingers curl into the bench, and I move my gaze back to the window. I have no idea how long I sit there, the light outside turning to night.
Every evening after that, I come back.
I don’t decide to—I just end up here, the way you end up anywhere that asks nothing of you. The room doesn’t require anything from me. No vigilance. No performance of survival. The bench faces the window, and the window faces the mountains, and the mountains don’t care who I am or how I got here, and that turns out to be exactly what I need.
Somewhere between nights spent here, this room starts to feel like mine. I don’t remember the precise moment my pulse stopped quickening at the sound of the lock—only that it happened, gradually, the way all the slow things happen.
Tonight, the snow’s heavier, the wind louder. I stand and walk to the window. Cross my arms. Watch the last of the light drain from the horizon, the mountains going dark and enormous beyond the glass.
My mind’s quiet in the way it only gets here. No case files. No locked doors. Just the dark coming in and the room holding still around me.
“Reth.” The voice comes from behind me. I don’t move. Not outwardly. My heart slams once, violent enough to feel in my throat, and I let it—grip my own elbows tighter, steady my breath, and keep my eyes on the mountains.
“Before I left, you asked my name.”
“Reth?” I repeat quietly. The syllable is strange in my mouth. Incomplete somehow. “Is that short for something?”
A pause.
“No.” His voice is flat. Final. Carrying something underneath. “It’s what’s left.”
I turn, but he’s already gone, the hallway empty, and I’m standing there with a strange sense that I just saw a glimpse of something I shouldn’t have.
It’s what’s left.
I’ve heard voices like that before. The careful detachment of someone who learned early that survival sometimes means carving parts of yourself away.
My chest tightens before I can stop it. It’s instinct, definitely not reason. It’s the part of me that catalogues tone shifts, that notices when silence isn’t defiance but protection. I’m trained to look past behavior and search for fracture.
No.
I can’t afford to do that here. Empathy is dangerous in this house. He stole me. Whatever happened to him doesn’t erasethat. But I can’t help the unwelcome thought stirred by his return.
