The air still smelled of the sea when the door opened.
For a moment, the house seemed to hold its breath — the way the tide pauses before drawing back.
Then came the voice, low and final.
"Not another word."
Henry Ross's tone was iron, each syllable clipped clean. It pressed against Cael's chest harder than any shove could.
The next sound was a door slamming, and just like that, Cael found himself outside.
He stood on the gravel path, shoes half-tied, wind curling salt through his hair. The gate loomed behind him, the house before him, and between the two stretched a silence so sharp it hummed.
Inside, something glass broke. Someone breathed in sharply. No one called his name.
In the doorway, his father's outline remained for an instant — tall, disciplined, the shape of a storm pretending to be calm.
Behind him the hallway glowed pale gold. His mother's hands were clasped at her heart. Eve stood near her, a small white cast gleaming against her dark dress like an accusation. She looked fragile, voice trembling.
"Please," she said, "it wasn't—he didn't mean—"
Aaron's hand caught her shoulder. "You're defending him again."
Caleb's gaze slid to Cael, cold and careful. "You think this is the first time?"
Their words tangled like smoke, indistinct, but every syllable burned.
Cael wanted to speak — to tell them she had simply slipped — but the air itself resisted him. Even the house seemed to reject his breath.
The scents of home filled the yard: his father's sharp iron, his brothers' cedar cologne, the faint honey of Eve's fear. They mixed until the air felt too heavy to inhale. His own trace — salt and wind and sunlight — didn't belong among them.
He tried again to speak. Nothing came. The memory of the fall drowned every word — the thud of bone on marble, the gasp, the sound that still rang in his skull.
Henry's gaze fixed on him one last time. The decision was already made.
"You step beyond that gate, Cael," his father said quietly, "and you don't come back."
There was no room for argument.
Then the door closed, final as a sentence.
For a long while, Cael simply listened — to the wind in the eaves, to the slow crash of the tide against the seawall beyond the garden. He could still hear faint laughter from inside, nervous and misplaced. None of it belonged to him. Maybe it never had.
He sat down near the gate because he couldn't think of anywhere else to go. The iron was cool against his back. The stones beneath him still held the day's warmth, but when the sun slipped under the horizon, that warmth vanished, replaced by the damp chill drifting in from the coast.
Night drew the house smaller.
Light pooled in the windows — rooms where he'd eaten, studied, slept. He could almost see his ghost moving through them: polite, quiet, careful. Always careful.
The ache in his chest spread slowly, like the sea washing into sand.
By the second day, the scent of home had thinned.
Someone had scrubbed the front walk; soap replaced salt. Servants crossed through the side gate once or twice, eyes averted. Cael nodded anyway. None of them nodded back.
Hunger came as a dull hum, easy to ignore. The harder thing was sound — footsteps above him, a door slamming, a laugh that for a heartbeat sounded like his mother's. Every noise reminded him that life inside continued, perfectly balanced, minus one piece.
He tried to sleep sitting up, leaning against the wall, but sleep felt too close to surrender.
When dawn bled pale over Virelles, mist rolling in from the harbor, he watched instead. The sea mirrored the gray sky, endless and still. If he breathed deeply, he could almost pretend the salt belonged to him again — not to the city that would soon forget his name.
On the third night, rain came.
It softened the gravel and turned the house into watercolor. His coat clung heavy with it; each drop carried the brine of the shore. He wondered if his father was awake, listening to the storm — or if they had already learned to sleep without the sound of him moving through the halls.
By the fifth day, the ache quieted into something like understanding.
He didn't need to be told again that he wasn't wanted. The lesson had sunk in — salt through open skin. When the wind shifted, he could smell the bakery down the lane, the faint sweetness of bread he would never eat. The world kept offering small mercies, indifferent ones.
Sometimes he imagined standing, knocking, saying again that it hadn't been his fault. But even in his imagination, the door never opened. The picture they'd chosen to believe was stronger than truth.
The week turned.
The sea brightened, as if unaware of him. The air warmed, heavy with the promise of summer. Cael rose stiffly, brushing salt from his sleeves. The iron gate waited — no longer a barrier, only a line. Beyond it, the city's skyline shimmered through the haze, promise and exile at once.
He looked back once. The house glowed white in the morning light, perfect as a postcard.
He felt no sharp grief now — only distance, only quiet.
At an upstairs window, movement: Eve.
Her face was pale behind the glass, eyes shadowed but clear. When their gazes met, she lifted her good hand to the pane, a gesture so small it might have been a trick of light. Then she smiled — barely, like sunlight through fog.
He understood it for what it was: not forgiveness, not defiance, only the last tether between what had been and what would be.
Cael inhaled deeply, one final breath full of salt and memory.
Then he turned toward the city.
His steps were steady, his figure small against the pale road. The gate stayed closed behind him, but the silence that followed belonged to him now — salt, wind, and all.