CASSIAN

The garden sat at the back of the estate, hidden from the main house by thick rows of hedges.

It was a part of the grounds the gardeners kept tidy, but no one ever actually went there.

It was a ghost of a place. No one was supposed to be out here at this hour, which was exactly why it was perfect for us.

The moon was full and heavy in the sky. It cast a light so bright that the grass looked silver.

The shadows were sharp, cutting across the stone paths like black knives. It was the kind of light that made everything familiar look slightly wrong, as if the world had been swapped for a copy while I wasn’t looking.

I found him near the far wall. It was the spot where the manicured lawn ended and the wild trees began.

Julian was standing there, but he wasn’t in his usual staff uniform. He was wearing his own clothes, the fabric dark and worn. His chestnut hair was loose, caught by the slight breeze. At his feet sat a bag.

It was small, just big enough for the basics. It was the kind of bag a man packs when he has already made up his mind and doesn’t plan on looking back.

I stopped. The air felt still, like the world was holding its breath. I knew what I was seeing before he even turned around.

My body understood the shape of the moment long before my brain could find the words for it. It was the stillness of an ending.

Julian turned toward me. He didn’t look happy to see me, but he didn’t look guilty either.

His face held the look of someone who had made a hard choice. He knew this would hurt, and he had decided to do it anyway because he had no other way to survive.

"What’s going on?" I asked. I couldn’t stop looking at the bag. "Where are you going?"

Julian hesitated. The moonlight caught the bridge of his nose and the curve of his cheek. "I’m leaving, Cassian."

"To where?" I stepped closer. "When are you coming back?"

"I’m not," he said. He said it simply. There was no drama in his voice, no anger. Just a plain fact.

That simplicity was the hardest part to hear. It meant there was no room for an argument.

A wave of panic hit me. I didn’t let it show on my face... I had been trained by my father to keep my expressions flat but I felt it in my gut.

My stomach dropped like a stone in a well. My chest felt tight, as if someone were wrapping iron bands around my ribs.

I realized right then exactly what I was about to lose, and the size of that hole was terrifying.

"Why?" I asked. I kept my voice level. I had to keep everything inside. "What happened to make you do this?"

Julian looked at the trees. He wasn’t being dramatic. He was being honest.

He told me he had been here too long. He was tired of moving through a house that didn’t see him.

He was tired of serving people who looked right through him as if he were part of the furniture.

He wasn’t building a life here. He wasn’t becoming anything. He was just staying still while the rest of the world moved on without him.

"I feel like I’m disappearing," he said quietly. He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to the dark. "Piece by piece. I can’t keep doing that. There won’t be anything left of me soon."

I understood him. I had always known Julian better than anyone else. I knew the hunger in him for something more than this.

I had seen the way he looked at the horizon.

He was like a bird in a cage that had forgotten it had wings until tonight.

I understood why he had to go, but understanding didn’t make the pain stop. It didn’t make me want him to stay any less.

Underneath the logic, there was the truth I couldn’t say. Julian was the only reason I bothered to get out of bed in the morning.

He was the only reason this massive, cold house hadn’t become a place where I just walked into walls out of spite. He was the life in this place.

But I didn’t say that. I kept those thoughts away under the list of things I never tell the people I can’t afford to lose.

"Then I’ll come with you," I said.

"No," Julian said. He said it fast, like he had been expecting me to offer. "You can’t. You have all of this."

He gestured with a wide sweep of his hand toward the great stone house and everything it represented. "This is yours, Cassian. All of it. Your father’s legacy—"

"Is not mine," I interrupted. My voice was flat and certain. "It has never been mine. It will never be mine."

"Preston—"

"Preston will inherit the name and the money," I said. "He will take everything. I will get nothing. I’ll either die in some way that makes things easy for them, or I’ll live here as a reminder of a past my father’s wife can’t forgive. You see a future in this place, Julian. All I see is a cage."

Julian looked at me. I could see the argument he was building start to fall apart behind his eyes.

He saw the truth in my face. He saw that I was just as trapped as he was, only my bars were made of gold instead of iron.

"There is nothing here," I said. I didn’t think before the words came out. "There is nothing I want to stay for."

I paused. The thing I really wanted to say was pushing against the back of my teeth. It was heavy and hot. It didn’t quite make it out, but something else did.

"I only want to be where you are," I said quietly.