Chapter 137

Nikolai. It started small. A conversation here. A passing look there. At first, I thought it was my own exhaustion playing tricks on me. The last weeks had been heavy, slow in some ways, too fast in others. Six weeks since Arsen had nearly died. Six weeks since Sofia had looked us in the eyes and told us she wouldn’t choose—because she couldn’t. And somehow, none of us had walked away. We never would. I had expected the distance between us and Arsen to stretch, for the resentment to fester even more, but that’s not what happened. Instead, it was the quiet things. The way he stepped back when tempers ran high. The way he never inserted himself where he wasn’t wanted but was always just there when it mattered. I noticed it first when Nial had come back from hunting one of Sokolov's consiglieres, stiff, a rare tension lining his shoulders. He didn’t talk about it—not to us. Not to anybody. He just went straight to the back porch, standing in the cold, watching the night sky like he did wh