LERA
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Ilsa stood in her doorway with the porch light behind her, and for a moment nobody moved — the whole scene suspended, Caius still frozen at the gate, Lera's heart still hammering from six hours of terror that had only just found somewhere to land.
"He wasn't coming here for me," Ilsa said. "Whatever this looks like. I need you to understand that before anything else gets said."
"Then why is he standing at your gate at four in the morning," Lera said. Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended, months of jealousy and hours of fear compressing into something that couldn't stay gentle any longer.
Ilsa's eyes moved to Caius.
Then back to Lera.
"Because I handed him something today that I should have handled myself, years ago, instead of turning it into his burden the momen
