"I thought you sent her a message! Why isn't she here yet?"
Violet's voice carried too much sharpness, too much strain to be mistaken for simple impatience. It was a question born of hours of stillness, of pacing the same worn stretch of floorboards, of watching Cain sink deeper into whatever state had claimed him. Her words lashed through the thick quiet like a whip.
Night had already folded itself over the world beyond the windows. The room, closed off from any moonlight, glowed only in the unsteady reach of a single candle burning low on the table beside the bed. The flame shivered each time the air shifted, scattering distorted shadows over the walls and across the floorboards.
