CHAPTER 131
The final stages of the meal were conducted in heavy silence. It wasn't the kind of silence that screamed with hostility, but rather the cautious, measured quiet of two people who had realized they were stuck in the same orbit and were trying very hard not to collide.
Occasionally, the spell of the room would be broken by a brief request. "The salt," Clara would murmur, her white eyes never leaving the sauce she was reducing.
Isabella would slide the cellar across the island without a word, her movements careful, her mind still anchored to the image of a skeletal King sleeping through a millennium.
They weren't friends—certainly not after the library—but they were two women sharing the walls in a house that had been cold for far too long.
As they began to dish the food into elegant, minimalist bowls that looked far too expensive for a simple stew, the tension in Isabella's chest reached a boiling point.
