Chapter 38: "How's the search going?"

Caleum’s pov.

She gardens when she is sad.

I come back from the Conference, already armed with the knowledge that Sophia is here, in my house.

And while I expect a war, I do not meet one.

Sophia is in plain clothes again.

The look on her face is dull.

Her movements, though steady, lack that draft of energy she always has. That current that lets me know she is around and about, and that lets me poke at her sometimes,

Just aching to see her lose herself, and grant me the triumph of seeing what dwells underneath.

Guilt picks at my heart because of my tone when I spoke to her. Because of the words that I said to her.

I know who she is. I know what she’s been through, and still, I spoke to her that way, made her feel the way Ulric makes her feel, and yet I say I’m nothing like that oaf.

“Trouble in paradise?”

Sebastien’s presence beside me registers like a wisp of smoke in my mind but my response is hard and cold.

“There is no paradise. How’s the search going?”

I see Sebastien shrug fr