The silence that followed the moths' departure was not empty. It was pressurized, heavy with the weight of things left unsaid. Mailah backed away from the center of the room, her gaze fixed on Grayson. He was still standing there, his blade hummed with a light that seemed to eat the oxygen in the room.
"Four hundred years," Mailah whispered, the number echoing against the walls. "She said you've been here for four hundred years."
Grayson didn't turn. He stared at the spot where the old woman had vanished, his shoulders locked in a rigid line. "She is a creature of distortion, Mailah. Her words are meant to twist."
"Answer me," she said, her voice rising, shaking off the paralysis of shock. "Are you a man who stumbled into a quiet life, or are you something that built a prison and called it a cottage?"
