Chapter 6

Violet's POV

I have never been good at waiting.

Kaston knew that about me. He used to say it like it was charming — "Violet wants what she wants, right now" — back when wanting things quickly was still something men found attractive in a woman. Back when I was the one he was waiting for.

The night I landed, I sent him three messages. Not because I needed to. Because I wanted to see how long it would take.

It didn't take long.

"Are you still in love with me?" That was what he asked. Not hello, not how was the flight, not I missed you. Just that — stripped down, raw, the question he'd been sitting on for however many years I'd been gone. I typed back yes before he'd even finished sending it, and forty minutes later his headlights were pulling up to the terminal.

He looked the same. A little harder around the eyes, maybe. That was fine. I wasn't here for soft.

The thing about Seraphina Frost is that I was not threatened by her. I want to be clear about that. When Kaston told me, eventually, in the halting way he had of admitting things he wasn't proud of — that she'd been staying at the estate, that it had been three years, that she was still there — I wasn't threatened. I was annoyed. There's a difference.

Annoyed the way you're annoyed when you leave a coat somewhere and come back to find someone else wearing it. It's your coat. You just forgot it for a while.

She had his coffee order memorized. She knew which side of the bed he slept on. She'd spent three years building a life around a man who had never once offered her anything permanent, and she'd done it so quietly, so patiently, that I almost — almost — felt something adjacent to respect.

Almost.

But patience isn't the same as belonging. And she didn't belong there. She never had.

---

We were at dinner when Rex's message came through.

I noticed it because Kaston's whole posture shifted — the slight release across his shoulders, the way his expression went from guarded to something softer and more self-satisfied. He set the phone face-down on the white tablecloth and picked up his wine glass, and the corners of his mouth did that thing they do when he thinks a problem is solving itself.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Nothing."

I let it go. I was good at letting things go when it served me.

When he excused himself to use the restroom, weaving between tables toward the back of the restaurant, I waited exactly four seconds. Then I picked up his phone.

His birthday. I'd known that since I was nineteen years old. The lock screen opened without a pause.

I went to Rex's message first. [Seraphina just picked up a high-end men's wrist guard in the moon-silver section. Looks like it's for you. Take care of her.]

I read it twice. A men's wrist guard. Moon-silver. She'd gone back to the same district where she'd been wearing that cuff — the one Kaston had tried to get her to take off, the one she'd refused, the one that had been sitting on her wrist like a statement she hadn't finished making yet. And now she'd bought him something. A gift. An olive branch wrapped in expensive metalwork.

She thinks she's still in this.

I scrolled up without really deciding to. Their chat history loaded — her messages first, a whole thread of them, and then I found the one that stopped me. She'd sent him a full travel route. Detailed, organized, the kind of thing that takes time to put together — locations, distances, notes about which roads were better before the season changed. She'd written a small paragraph at the top: she'd suggested they go, just the two of them, take a few days, clear their heads.

His reply had come six hours later.

[Not going.]

Two words. Six hours. And after that — nothing. She hadn't sent another message. Not one.

I put the phone back exactly where it had been, face-down on the tablecloth beside his water glass.

Kaston came back to the table and I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and neither of us said anything about the phone. He thought I hadn't touched it. He was always underestimating how fast I could move when I needed to.

Here's what I understood, sitting across from him with the rest of dinner still in front of us: Seraphina Frost was not trying to hold on. She was already letting go. She'd stopped messaging him, stopped pushing, stopped filling the silence the way she used to. The wrist guard wasn't an olive branch. It wasn't for him at all.

And Kaston, bless him, had absolutely no idea.

Which meant I had a window. A small one. And I was not going to waste it.

I excused myself before the waiter brought dessert.

I walked through the restaurant toward the lobby, past the host stand and the soft jazz trio playing near the bar, and found a quiet corner near the coat check, away from the noise. I pulled out my phone and called Monica Grey.

She picked up on the second ring, which told me she'd been expecting to hear from someone tonight. Monica always knew when the air in a room had shifted, even rooms she wasn't in.

"I don't want to make this into more than it is," I said, keeping my voice easy, "but I thought you should know what I saw today."

I told her I'd been with Kaston near the moon-silver district — just browsing, just a casual afternoon — when I'd spotted Seraphina inside one of the workshops. I told her she'd been at the counter with a craftsman, asking about the paired-commission process, trying on one of the bonding cuffs, asking how long a matched set would take to produce. I told her the craftsman had been showing her the bloodline-binding options.

I told Monica that Seraphina had been asking in a very public way, in a very loud voice, about what happened to a cuff once both bloodlines were registered.

There was a silence on the other end of the line.

"She's pushing for a formal bond," Monica said. Her voice had gone flat and precise, the way it did when she was already three steps ahead of the conversation. "In public. Where people would see."

"I just thought you should be aware," I said. "I'm not trying to stir anything up."

"You did the right thing calling me." Another pause. "Leave it with me."

I said goodnight. I slipped my phone back into my bag.

She would handle it. Monica Grey had never needed much encouragement to move against someone she'd already decided didn't belong.

I walked back through the restaurant, past the bar and the other diners, and returned to our table. I sat down and picked up my fork.

Kaston looked up. "Everything okay?"

"Completely fine," I said.

I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine.