Seraphine didn't go to the window the next night.
She told herself it was the rain. The cold. The wind that moaned too much like memory through the cracks in the glass.But mostly, it was the warmth she still felt in her fingers.From the lock.
She sat in the center of the room instead, a book open in her lap and unread. The silence pressed close, heavier than usual.
She wondered if he would still come.
Not because of the dog.
Not because of the bread.
But because some part of her needed to believe he would.
Lucien knew it wasn't a trick of the light.
He'd seen it—just for a second—the glint of a frame, the shimmer of something too perfect to be real. A house made of glass, veiled in silence, standing where nothing should.
The moment her hand touched the door, the world had rippled.
Now he sat in the mud again, back against a dead tree, cigarette burned down to the filter. The dog was asleep beside him, a bony thing with dreams it kicked at in its sleep.
Lucien had seen it. Once.A glint—barely there—a shape behind the veil, like glass catching light from a place the sun couldn't reach. It had flickered into existence the moment his eyes met the door. Or maybe when her hand brushed it. He wasn't sure.
But it had been real.
Now, the clearing was just a clearing again. Wet earth. Withered trees. The dog, curled near his boot, let out a soft huff in its sleep.
He sat still for a long time, the weight of his coat heavy with rain, a cigarette burning down between his fingers.
There was no sound but the wind and the low creak of branches shifting in the dark.
He didn't bring food tonight. The dog didn't seem to mind.
Instead, he pulled a small notebook from his coat pocket—edges worn, corners soft—and flipped to a blank page. The pencil scratched faintly as he tried to recall the lines of the house. What little he'd seen. What little he could trust.
It wasn't much. Just an impression. A doorway. The glint of glass. But something inside him held onto it like it mattered.
Like it meant something.
He stayed until the cold crept into his bones and the night folded in tighter.
Then he stood. Brushed off the dirt. And left the notebook page behind—folded and tucked into the weeds at the edge of the clearing.
Just in case.