EMMA'S POV
The night did not arrive all at once. It slipped in quietly, like a held breath finally released, stretching shadows across the stone corridors of the Citadel and pressing cool air against the skin of those still awake. Aren stood at the eastern balcony, hands braced on the weathered rail, eyes fixed on the horizon where the last thin line of sunset bled into darkness. The city below murmured softly—lamps being lit, doors closing, distant laughter quickly swallowed by curfew bells. It was the calm that came before a reckoning, and Aren felt it in his bones.
Behind him, the door creaked open.
"You're going to wear a hole in that view if you keep staring at it," Emma said gently.
Aren didn't turn right away. He knew her footsteps now, the way she paused half a second before speaking, as if giving the world time to adjust to her presence. "I'm just making sure it's still there," he replied.
"The horizon?" she asked.
"The future," he said.
