CELESTE’S POV
I had been in Nightfang for weeks now.
Long enough to learn the rhythm of the place.
Long enough to recognize the shift of guards at the perimeter, the distant echoes of training from the fields beyond the main compound, the way the halls grew emptier as night settled in.
Long enough to understand that while no one barred my door, no one truly welcomed me either.
Freedom, in its most hollow form.
I could walk the halls.
I could sit in the gardens.
I could exist.
But I did so alone.
No one sought me out. No one lingered if I happened to cross their path. Conversations died the moment I stepped too close, eyes slid away, shoulders stiffened, and whatever warmth had been there before I arrived vanished into thin air.
They knew who I was, what I had done.
And in Nightfang, that mattered more than any title or position I used to hold.
I sat by the window, my fingers tracing the edge of the glass as I stared out at the stretch of trees beyond the compound walls.
