we kept to the shadows as instructed, cloaked by Rhys’s glamours. She had insisted on facing this alone, and we weren’t ones to argue.

The estate was as she’d described it: elegant, stately, and frozen in a time that had no room for joy. Snow piled in clean banks around the marble foundation, the pale stone glowing faintly in the winter sun.

She paused before the doors, hood drawn low over her face, her hands hidden in the fur-lined pockets of her cloak. For all her stillness, I knew her well enough now to see the tension in her stance, the slight tightening of her shoulders. Her breath misted in the air as the bell chimed, clear and sharp, cutting through the silence.

When the door finally opened, the warmth spilling from within was like a knife against the cold. A housekeeper stood there—plump, round-faced, her hair streaked with silver. Her expression began with polite confusion but quickly shifted into something sharper, something tinged with unease as her gaze settled on my companion.

“May I help…?” The woman’s voice faltered as she stared, her words trailing into silence.

Even with the hood hiding her ears and crown, the truth was evident. That glow, that stillness—it marked her as something not entirely human an “I’m here to see my family,” she said, her voice rough, choked. A stark contrast to the hard-edged determination that had brought her to this moment.

The housekeeper’s hesitation was answer enough. “Your-your father is away on business, but your siblings…” The words came haltingly. The door stayed mostly closed.

Behind her, from somewhere deeper in the house, another voice called out.

“Mrs. Laurent?” A voice called at, as what I could assume, one of feyre’s siblings called out.