Chapter 4: Shadows in the Halls
***Cadiz***
I woke up alone. The bed was huge and cold, with only one side used. The fire had died down to embers, and I could hear that morning bell ringing somewhere in the keep. My first morning as a married man, and my husband was nowhere.
Maybe he never came to his room at all.
I got dressed and stepped into the hallway. Ravenshollow was already busy with servants rushing around carrying trays and buckets. They moved fast, like they'd get in trouble for being slow. When they saw me, they bowed quickly and kept walking.
"Good morning," I said to a maid carrying linens.
She bowed again. "My lord." Then she hurried away.
I tried smiling at the next servant. Same thing. Bow, polite words, then gone. It was like talking to ghosts.
The whole place felt different from home. Everything was too quiet, too organized. Even the way people walked seemed planned out. Guards stood perfectly still at every corner, staring straight ahead like I wasn't there. Nobody laughed or joked around. Nobody seemed... alive.
I wandered through the halls, trying to figure out where I fit in all this. Every room I looked into was the same, clean, plain, functional. No decorations, no comfortable chairs, nothing that said "home." Just stone and wood and the smell of cold mountain air.
The training yard was full of soldiers practicing with wooden swords. They moved in perfect lines, following shouted orders. Clack, clack, clack, the same movements over and over. I watched from a window, but none of them looked up. I might as well have been invisible.
Even the gardens were weird. Instead of flowers, there were just rows of vegetables and herbs planted in straight lines. Everything measured and organized like a military formation.
By noon, I was tired of wandering and feeling useless. I found myself in the east wing where it was quieter. The halls here felt empty, with just my footsteps echoing off the stone walls.
Then I found the library.
The door was heavy oak with iron hinges that creaked when I opened it. Inside smelled like old books and dust, warm and somehow alive compared to the rest of the keep. Shelves stretched up to the ceiling, packed with leather-bound books.
For the first time since I got here, I could breathe properly.
I walked between the shelves, reading titles. Lots of history books, war manuals, strategy guides. Serious stuff. But tucked in between were some poetry books and philosophy, their pages soft from being read a lot.
I picked up a history of the empire and took it to a table by the window. The colored glass made pretty patterns on the pages, blue and green light that felt warmer than the gray day outside. For a while, I forgot about everything else. Just me and the book and quiet that didn't feel lonely.
That's when I felt someone watching me.
I looked up and my heart jumped. Raizel stood at the end of the aisle, holding some papers. His pale eyes were looking right at me, and for once he wasn't pretending I didn't exist.
We stared at each other for what felt like forever. My face got hot and my hands started shaking. There was something in his expression, not exactly surprise, but like he hadn't expected to find me here. Like maybe this was his private space and I was intruding.
Then he looked away, turned around, and left without saying a word.
I sat there staring at the empty aisle, my heart pounding. He'd actually looked at me. Really looked, not just that cold glance from dinner. It probably didn't mean anything, but it felt like... something.
I closed the book and pressed my hands against the cover, trying to calm down. Outside the window, the mountains looked as cold and distant as ever. Inside the keep, nothing had changed. But for just a moment, Raizel had seen me.
And even though he'd walked away, even though he probably regretted it already, that moment felt important. Like maybe there was more to him than the ice-cold husband who'd made it clear our marriage meant nothing.
I spent the rest of the day the same way I'd spent the morning, alone. Eating meals in my room, walking empty corridors, trying to make conversation with servants who answered in single words. By evening, I was back at my window watching the soldiers drill in torchlight.
This was my life now. Days of silence, nights of loneliness, and tiny moments like the one in the library that made me hope for something more.
I pressed my hand against the cold glass. Tomorrow would probably be exactly the same. But maybe, if I was patient, there might be more of those moments. Maybe eventually they'd add up to something real.
It wasn't much to hope for, but it was all I had.