Enara left Liria's room with the sort of energy that could crack stone a thundering, messy cocktail of anger, longing, humiliation, and the peculiar frustration that only a once-in-a-century idiot you happen to love can provide. The corridor was silent except for the distant sounds of repair: hammers on half-fallen walls, the complaints of a carpenter somewhere down the hall, and, just beneath it all, the shuddery echo of her own breath.
She paused by her door, the wood still painted with the faint wards her mother had inscribed when she was twelve and going through a phase of "borrowing" forbidden books. Even now, the runes hummed under her palm, soothing and familiar. Enara took a deep breath then another, and another trying to stuff all that boiling confusion into some kind of reasonable container.
It didn't work.
She slipped inside her room and shut the door, locking the world (and especially Liria) on the other side.
