Mailah expected Grayson to return—to knock, to plead, to use some dark, impossible magic to mend the rift between them. But there was only the hollow whistle of the wind against the chimney stack.
She stood up, her legs feeling like lead, and walked to the window. Outside, the valley was a blur of charcoal and ash. There was no sign of him. He had simply dissolved into the landscape he had spent four hundred years trying to hold together.
Was he waiting in the ruins of the garden, or had he finally surrendered to the void he had fought so long? The doubt that had plagued her—the suspicion that she was merely a tool in his grand, ancient machine—was now a cold, permanent fixture in her heart. Yet, in the absence of his presence, the cottage felt deathly, unbearably empty. She realized then that even if he had hunted her, even if he had been a monster, he was the only thing that had made this house a home.
