She woke to silence.
Not the comfortable kind. Not the kind that settled over a room when the fire burned low and the world outside the window forgot you existed. This was the other kind. The kind that pressed against your eardrums like water. The kind that meant something was holding its breath.
Arin sat up in bed. Her shift was damp with sweat. Her hair stuck to her neck in dark, tangled ropes. The charm hung against her chest — cool, dormant, dead weight on a leather cord.
Still quiet.
She touched it. Nothing. No pulse. No green light. No voice whispering behind her thoughts like a hand sliding under a locked door.
She'd pushed him out last night. Pushed him out and the silence had held through the dark hours, through the fitful sleep that came in fragments, through the nightmares she couldn't remember but could still taste — ash and copper and something sweet that made her stomach turn.
The silence should have been a relief.
It wasn't.
