Grief was a poor bedfellow. It offered no warmth, only a hollow space where a daughter's laughter used to be. For nights, Elias Wren had not truly slept. He had merely drifted in and out of a gray, restless twilight, haunted by the faces of the daughters he had lost.
But tonight, he woke completely.
It was not a sound that woke him. It was a preternatural stillness. The familiar groan of the old house settling, the distant cry of a night bird—all of it was gone, swallowed by a thick, oppressive silence.
And then, the cold.
A line of glacial ice was pressed against the side of his throat. He felt the faint, sharp pressure of a blade's edge, a promise of a swift and silent death.
He did not move. He did not breathe. He had spent his life as a man of quiet precision, a master of silks and threads. He knew the value of stillness.
